Having dried as much as she could dry, Danielle finally got her own portion of Necessities Store jerky and cherry tomatoes and looked around. She almost missed Cassy, who confessed with a grin that she had been demonstrating her Seen and Not Heard Skill. Once Danielle knew where she was (in plain sight at the kitchen counter!) she didn’t find her eyes sliding off of her anymore, and could pay attention to what else she was doing; it looked like she was copying something from her Class Guide book to a sheet of sketch paper. “Right now, I’m using Transcribe,” Cassy explained, “but if all goes well, this might be my first official magic scroll!”

  Akari, meanwhile, was sharpening her knife – presumably with her Sharpening Skill in play. Heather, to Danielle’s pleased surprise, was curled up on her bed reading Human Biology for Camp Medics and Healers. As hard as Heather found it to accept the harsh realities for herself, Danielle had to admit that when someone gave her a logical reason to do something unpleasant, she did do the thing.

  Danielle finished her lunch about the time Akari finished her knife, and offered to do Sadie’s knife with her Skill too. Sadie accepted. It looked to Danielle like she was finally trying out the cord twisting Skill she’d taken with her Class. Danielle decided to check out the book on enhancement Skills, and went over to survey the room’s miniature library a bit more thoroughly.

  Their four favorite books were back in place on the top shelf, except for Crafting for Skill and Trade, which was open next to Sadie. The top shelf also had Class guides for four Classes – Mana Casters, Element Shapers, Basic Body Enhancers, and Herbalists. All but the one for Body Enhancers said they were for “Basic and First Tiers.” Danielle opened the one for Herbalists out of curiosity, and discovered that “first tiers” apparently meant “tiers 1 and 2,” both of which were higher than “basic.” Danielle was about to put the book back when she noticed the word “unlock” at the bottom of the table of contents. A closer look and a quick flip to the back of the book, and she found herself skimming instructions for unlocking the Herbalist Class at any of the three tiers the book covered. She closed it thoughtfully and stuck it under her arm.

  Altogether, including the second copy of A Firmitatem Ranger’s Guide to the Outside, there had been eight books on the top shelf, held in the center with simple wooden bookends. They were obviously the books the Sending Authority expected people to need first. The second shelf was, in a way, more interesting. Many of the books sounded more academic, as Heather had said, but they still sounded incredibly useful. A Compendium of Crafting Skills, for example – Danielle pulled it out and flipped to the index, found the page for Fiber Twisting, and promptly took it over to Sadie.

  “Check it out,” Danielle said, showing her the entry. “Instructions on how to use and level the Fiber Twisting Skill, complete with advice on what to practice without the Skill active, to help it level better.”

  Sadie looked at the book, looked at her current effort (which was falling apart), then set down the twisted grasses with exasperation and took the Compendium from Danielle. “This is one of the books Cassy’s mad at us for not reading?” she asked. “Where is Cassy anyhow?”

  Danielle silently pointed at Cassy and Sadie looked again. “Please tell me that’s a Skill,” she said.

  “It’s totally a Skill,” Cassy confirmed with a grin. “Now that you’ve found me, it won’t hide me from you again unless you ignore me for a while.”

  “How long is a while?” Sadie asked practically.

  “About 20 minutes,” Cassy said. “Have I mentioned yet how much I like the way you think? You always ask such useful questions, and you manage to never sound like you’re weirded out by anything.”

  “Thanks? Everyone’s System is magical and crazy, I stopped freaking out about that before I even got my Youth level,” Sadie said. “20 minutes isn’t that long, but it’s kind of long for a Skill. Is that when you have to refresh?”

  “Nope. The Skill lasts a whole hour!” Cassy said. “It was great for going unnoticed in a corner of dad’s office when he had clients in for work.”

  “Wow, nice,” Sadie said. “Anyway, thanks for recommending the book, this does look useful.” She nodded to Cassy and Danielle in turn.

  Danielle left her to her reading and went back to the bookshelf. There was another “compendium,” and this one was probably the book Danielle had come over to get: A Compendium of Mana Enhancement Skills. She tucked it under her arm with the Herbalist Class guide. There was also a book called Common Careers of the Sent, which Danielle thought she should probably bring to Lauren’s attention when next they crossed paths, A Survivor’s Guide to Classes, which Danielle pulled out to add to her reading stack, and Ranger Grettel’s Mana-Wilds Cookbook sitting next to Food Preservation For Your First Winter, which Danielle also grabbed. After that was an open space where Heather had probably pulled out the biology book. The ecology book Cassy had mentioned was on the other side of the gap, followed by a much more readable-sounding book titled Use the Whole Animal. Danielle imagined that would be another crafting book. Then there was A Natural History of the Firmitatem Sending Wilds, Vol 1 (Camp Constanza Region). Danielle thought that sounded interesting, although she wasn’t sure what it meant by “natural” history. She supposed she could read it and find out.

  The last two books almost sounded out of place alongside all the highly practical guides. One was titled, A Lost Boy’s Treatise On Finding Oneself, which sounded both too academic and too philosophical to be much use. The other was called Campfire Stories of the Sent, which sounded like fiction – worse, it sounded like scary fiction. Danielle didn’t think she really needed help getting scared, or scaring others. She supposed in winter, when they might be stuck inside a lot, it might be nice to have a book of exciting stories. She thought she’d prefer a different sort of stories than the title seemed to be implying, though. Regardless, that was twelve books on the lower shelf, once again centered between two wooden bookends rather than shelved more practically against one end. The bookshelf did technically have four shelves, though, and this way there were four bookends. Did the Sending Authority think there was a chance they’d end up with a lot more books? Or maybe they thought some roommates would want to have a shelf for each person?

  Danielle looked at her stack of books and admitted to herself that there might be something to that. She had four books in her hands, and she couldn’t read them all at once, but she didn’t want to forget that she wanted to get into them. In the end, she put Food Preservation For Your First Winter on the end of the counter for everyone to take notice of, and took the Compendium of Mana Enhancement Skills to her bed along with the two Class references.

  There, to get into the spirit of practicing Skills, she activated Active Camouflage, and said “Someone tell me next time you can see me.” Then she added Bubble of Silence on top of it. As the bubble started to expand, she realized that everyone was going to be inside of it, which was great for sharing private conversations, but not so great for trying to imitate Cassy’s Skill, which she thought would be amusing.

  She tried to hold the Skill boundary closer so it wouldn’t include everyone. It didn’t seem to be something she could hold in that sense, but to her surprise, while she didn’t manage to reduce the size of the bubble, the Skill did seem to get the idea after including Sadie and Heather, and wrapped around Akari without ‘popping’ her to the inside. Cassy, interestingly, was excluded automatically because the Bubble of Silence boundary came up against another round boundary around her, and treated it like a wall. Danielle could only assume that it was the boundary of Cassy’s own privacy Skill.

  Danielle made a few notes about that, then opened the book on mana enhancement Skills to the index and found Expand Volume. To her delight, it had a full page of information, and not just about the Skill itself. To be sure, it told her things like “The lesser Skill’s average expansion is 15% per level of the Skill” and “mana cost varies with the size of the volume to be expanded, the material properties of the boundary object, and the user’s familiarity with the Spell and its mana form.” However, it also had information on how to make sure a “boundary object” would meet the Skill’s definition of an expandable volume, what kind of attachments to use for enhanceable crystals on different containers, and what happened if you moved a crystal from a smaller container to a larger one. That last bit was important; if she was willing to wait a few days for the mana crystal to absorb mana before activating, she could save on mana when she enhanced the crystal by first attaching it to a smaller bag (or box, or other container) and then moving it.

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  Best of all, the book pointed out that many bags and other containers were manufactured with subtle attachment points for expansion crystals – and it used the school satchels as an example! Danielle excitedly pulled out her canvas school satchel and looked at the spot the book had indicated, on the end, right under the place where the handle attached. Sure enough, there were two carefully stitched openings there, looking almost like button holes. Turning it around, she saw another pair on the opposite end. She grabbed her Decision Day bag, and looked in the same spots; sure enough, it had them – two paired “button holes” in the leather of the end pieces, with carefully finished edges and no obvious use. Now that she knew what to look for, Danielle pulled out the little backpack-styled purse from the Necessities store, and found a similar pair of holes on the back, neatly centered near the top, between the straps.

  “I can see you again,” Akari said, “And you look excited. What’s up?”

  Danielle dismissed her Bubble of Silence. “All our bags have places for enhancing crystals designed into them!” she reported.

  “We know, the boring clear stones in the clasps,” Sadie said. “They put them on everything from Decision Day.”

  “No, not those – I mean these double-button-hole things. They’re on everything! The Decision Day bags, the school bags, even the purse from the necessities store! I just have to get a stone in a properly permanent-type setting, and wire the setting to the bag through the existing holes!” Danielle exclaimed. “If I didn’t know that, or if we hadn’t found all those rings, I’d have to practice on the stones the Sending Authority included, but now that I know about this? I can use the wire cutter in that pair of pliers to snip open the ring, I think, and then put it on the bag and hammer it into a clip that won’t move, and enhance that. And then if I level the Skill and want to put a better enhancement on? I pry off the old stone, put a new one on, and enhance that! I can’t work with the stones in the latches that way, but this I can do with tools we actually have!”

  “And it’ll work on the school bags, too?” Heather asked. “So we can enhance both of our satchels, now.”

  “We totally can!” Danielle agreed, feeling giddy. “Only 15% for now, but if it’s enough that the pots stop trying to stretch the sides out of shape? Already worth it!”

  “Listen to the two of you saying ‘we can’ when you mean ‘Danielle can.’ Do you know how much these enhancements normally cost? I mean, OK, level 1 isn’t a huge deal, but still,” Cassy said, shaking her head.

  “The rings belong to the party, they’re from scavenging,” Danielle said, “and I need to practice, so I may as well pay people back for letting me use the crystals by letting them use the practice enhancements.”

  “I’m not exactly trying to talk you out of doing nice stuff for your roommates,” Cassy said. “You should definitely be careful about it though, and even more careful about showing it off. Not to mention, you should actually think about what kind of price you want to quote to other people if and when they catch on and start asking about getting their own.”

  “I suppose that is a good point,” Danielle said. “These things can be kind of noticeable. I mean, maybe less so at level one; it’s not going to be like Ranger Juliette putting whole staves into a leather satchel that looks suspiciously like ours.”

  “Do you think the enhancements on the footlockers are level 1 though?” Akari asked.

  “Hm. We know they make a staff go from not-fitting to fitting,” Danielle said. “Let me do some math.” She scribbled a few calculations in the margin of her notebook, and finally said, “I’m not positive, but I think the footlockers are probably level 2.”

  “What level will you be able to start adding stuff like reducing the weight of the stuff too?” Heather asked.

  “That’s a separate enhancement, unfortunately,” Danielle said. “I’ll probably need to learn it to use higher level volume expansions on cloth bags, but I haven’t unlocked it yet. It might be a higher tier.”

  “You can combine enhancements when you have them both at high levels, though,” Cassy said. “My dad had a shoulder bag like ours, with just the one gem in the clasp, that he could put an entire weeks’ worth of groceries in, beverages included, and I could lift it without struggling even when he did.” She chuckled sadly. “He used to love meeting new store clerks and boggling their minds. The ones who knew us were all used to it.”

  “Cheer up, Cassy,” Akari said. “Just think, you know a great enhancer in the making; stick with us, and by the time we get back Inside, you’ll probably have your own bag like that. Then you can go shopping with your dad and blow the cashiers’ minds twice over!”

  “Heh, maybe,” Cassy said. “Danielle, before you try it, you should find the part about crystal colors and read that. It might make a difference what color these rings you found are. I mean, in terms of whether you use them to practice volume expansions, or save them for something else. One thing’s for sure, I don’t see you being the kind of enhancer that only learns one enhancement in ten levels. Not with the way you obsess over every useful-sounding Skill and the kind of mana you’re going to end up with from selling Skill Tokens.”

  “No, you’re right,” Danielle said. “I’m definitely going to want to learn a lot of different enhancements, and not just ones that will blend with the volume expansion. I’d also love to learn buffing enhancements, and I have a Skill tree that might provide prerequisites for that; and then there’s defensive enhancements – blue jeans might be sturdy for cloth, but we all know they’re not going to do a thing against swords or monster claws.”

  “Yeah, whatever color’s good for that kind should probably be held in reserve for that kind if at all possible,” Sadie said. “Especially because, now that you’ve pointed out the spots on our bags, I think the jeans might have a spot like that too.”

  Everyone stared at her for a moment, so Sadie stood up, got her half-dried jeans, and pointed out the spot on the waistband where there were two half-hidden buttonholes bracketing a belt loop. Then, she looked at the other side, and found another set, mirroring the first over the other hip. Heather, who still had her jeans on, felt along her own waistband under her belt, and nodded.

  “Well. I guess I’m reading up on crystal colors next,” Danielle said, and flipped forward to the table of contents.

  The study and practice session continued. Akari spent some time drilling with each weapon in front of her bed, including the bow, her belt knife, and even her hatchet. “For Weapon Sense,” she explained. Sadie switched off to carving wood after a while, so she’d had one activation of each of her Class Skills. Heather spent the whole time reading the anatomy book, sometimes flipping pages so rapidly that Cassy actually asked her if she was really reading at all. She explained that she was using her Speed Reading Skill, and Sadie and Danielle vouched that they’d seen her pass tests on material she’d read that way, back in school. The real surprise, in Danielle’s mind, was that she was slowing down so often; but then, the anatomy book probably had a lot of diagrams, and Speed Reading had never worked on those.

  Late in the afternoon, everyone had a snack of more cherry tomatoes, including a ration of three purple ones to recover the mana from their experimental Skill usage. They inspected the rest of the tomatoes, and fortunately they didn’t seem to be going bad. Sadie Purified them to be sure, taking another purple tomato to fuel the Skill. Danielle was pretty sure she caught her roommates putting a few points into Payment Plan right before they ate their purple tomatoes, but she didn’t see any reason to object; the purple tomatoes weren’t going to stay good forever, and there was value in keeping their pools close to full while also storing some away. She figured they were probably hoping to make tokens again before bed.

  About six o’clock, the group decided to take their meat down to the fire spot at the corner of the floor again, and use one of the hot dog skewers to try to cook it rotisserie style. Heather claimed another tomato in exchange for a promise to use her Fire Starter Skill. They all carried firewood down to the brazier, where they realized they would need to clean up the ashes from the night before. At least they were fully cooled; it seemed no one was using the brazier to cook lunches. This time, Akari simply scattered most of the ash across the grass, though it was obvious they couldn’t make a habit of that for the entire next year – or however many years it was.

  They got the meat on the skewer and propped it up awkwardly with the small two- and three-inch logs, and Heather got the fire going. Then Danielle led everyone in staff drills while the meat cooked again, as much to help stay warm as anything else. Heather joined them this time, and no one came around the corner to interrupt them. Danielle wasn’t terribly surprised, considering how cold and miserable it was outside. For all she knew it was hours until sunset, it was also fairly dark, or at least, very dim. Danielle made an exercise of trying to make out details through the low light and the rain, muttering to the System under her breath about it.

  It was because of this that she was the first to notice the girl running towards them through the woods, sword out; she stumbled and Danielle gasped, afraid she was going to literally fall on her own sword, but she recovered.

  “What’s wrong?” Cassy asked.

  “Hostility check, there,” Danielle said urgently, pointing at the girl as she finally left the tree line and ran directly towards them – or perhaps she was simply running to the fire?

  “I’ve got it,” Akari said. A long pause later, she said, “Not hostile.”

  Just a few seconds beyond that, and the girl reached the edge of the walkway and went down on one knee at the edge of the ground outside. “Do you have a Healer?” she asked urgently, between gasping breaths.

  Everyone glanced at Heather again. “If you’re going to do that, you might as well just say yes!” Heather exclaimed tensely.

  “Please, I need your help,” the girl begged. Danielle suddenly realized that her face wasn’t just wet, she was actually crying. “My group went out to see if we had anything in our snares, it’s been miserable all day but it just won’t stop, and we’re hungry but we already had pemmican for two meals, and – that’s not important! We were coming back and there was this huge cat! Three of the five of us are down, and we drove the cat off but it’s not down, it’s still prowling around in the shadows away from the lantern and yowling at us and Martin said he could hold it off while I got help but where am I going to get help? Oh please, oh please, help us!”

  A Natural History of the Firmitatem Sending Wilds will be all about significant people that have lived here and major events that have happened here in the past. When she finally gets around to reading it, she's going to be quite annoyed at the "misleading" title!

  https://discord.gg/u5dtzpShv2