CHAPTER 15 - THE WORKS

  “Fuck! Shit! Ouch!” Levan cursed, retreating from the tree and shaking his fingers out.

  The tree stood, uninjured as it would have been on earth, save a few marks of blood on the white bark, but Levan was pretty sure those were from his own hand, not the tree.

  “I—you could have warned me,” he grumbled.

  [ Optional Tasks |Optional Task Objective: Perform Unarmed Tree Strike — Not Found ]

  Levan turned in a slow circle, wishing there was someone he could actually stare down and not a voice in his mind.

  He decided glaring at the empty space of the clearing would have to do.

  “Can you remind me of the objective?” he asked. “Sass-less-ly, please,” he added a moment later.

  [ Task | Ability Core (Crafter) | Crafter’s Path ]

  [ Gather Stone: 0/3 ]

  [ Gather Sticks: 3/3 ]

  [ Craft Wooden Haft: 0/1 ]

  [ Craft Stone Axe, 0/1 ]

  Shouldn’t be a problem, he thought, finding ample stone on the ground in the form of rocks ranging from the size of marbles to the size of his fist. He had 3x stone already, but those were in his [ Aetherial Stores ], but apparently the crafter ability core didn’t recognize those rocks as being available to him. Still keeping an ear out for the apparent danger of a forest that had seemed fairly innocuous so far, he found a few sizable rocks and pulled them from the grass.

  [ Item Gained: x1 Stone ]

  [ Item Gained: x1 Stone ]

  [ Item Gained: x1 Stone ]

  [ Task | Gather Stone: 3/3 ]

  The recipe began to fill out in the interface in the form of a blue bar slowly climbing across the “Recipe: Stone Axe” line on his crafting list.

  “A little sass is fine,” Levan added, feeling a bit of tension.

  [ Task | Ability Core (Crafter) | Crafter’s Path ]

  [ Gather Stone: 3/3 ]

  [ Craft Wooden Axe / Stone Axe, 0/1 ]

  [ Estimated Level of Craft: Junk Quality ]

  “Yeah, there you go,” Levan mumbled.

  It does feel a little less tense, he thought, though that all could have been in his brain.

  “Now,” he said aloud, clearing his throat. “Crafting an axe,” he said, holding all three of the dirt-covered stones in one hand and the three required sticks in the other.

  “Craft!” he said.

  It worked for [ Aetherize ], might as well work for this too, right?

  The axe was not magically crafted.

  “So let me just…” he said, rearranging the stones into an axe-ish shape after dropping them a few times.

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  “It’s…not crafting,” he muttered.

  [ Codex > Chosen Soul |You have entered a world that contains frameworks and systems visible to you and others similar to a video-game or role-playing game on your world. Do not let the existence and visibilities of these frameworks detract from the notion that you are in a physical world. ]

  “So no magic buttons,” he mumbled.

  [ Codex > Chosen Soul | Magic suffuses the world with an inseparable depth. However, recommended wisdom is to assume physical rules until magic is better understood. ]

  “Oh,” Levan said, a little brighter this time. “So…some, magic buttons. That was my Fibromancy, right?”

  [ Skill: Fabrimancy ]

  “Sure,” he said, studying the stuff in his hands, frowning. He knelt to the ground.

  “First the haft,” he thought, looking at the sticks. He re-visted the 10 he gathered, and chose three sturdiest that had a similar size to one another.

  He lined them up top to bottom, squatting on his haunches over the grass.

  He could picture those sticks forming a wooden haft, with a bit of magic. Sure, he could picture that.

  He imagined the wood from all three sort of…melding into one much stronger piece.

  [ Skill Activated: Fabrimancy ]

  The skill hadn’t worked in the burning city. He’d gotten a whole host of notifications. This time, though…

  Levan held his hand over the trio of sticks, and moved it slowly across them. A warping of air, like something seen from across a hot bonfire, undulated over the sticks, causing the grass beneath them to flatten slightly as if by a pressure he was applying.

  [ Item Lost: 3x Sticks ]

  The wood stretched, coiling and curling over itself, forming a rod that contained all three of the previous sticks.

  It still bore the knobs and impurities of the sticks he’d used, but all were merged as one.

  When he picked up the haft, the weight was solid and reliable.

  [ Craft Successful! ]

  [ Item Crafted: Wooden Haft | Item Type: Material | Item Quality: Junk | A wooden handle used for a variety of makeshift tools. It isn’t pretty, and won’t last long, but it’ll do the job. ]

  “Hell yeah,” Levan muttered, listening to the haft woosh through the air as he swung it a time or two.

  [ Task: Craft Wooden Haft, 1/1 ]

  [ Task: Craft Stone Axe, 0/1 ]

  “Okay, easy enough,” he said.

  Why Fabrimancy had worked here where it hadn’t in the city, he wasn’t sure.

  [ Location: Secure ], the Codex informed him.

  “Huh,” he said, looking briefly around at the clearing. “I really don’t like the juxtaposition between how freaked those soldiers were and how nice is seems here,” he said.

  He waited in case the Codex had some “spoiler” for him in the form of advice or “game mechanics,” but it wasn’t forthcoming.

  Levan arranged the stones in a sideways triangle by the head of the haft, in a rough approximation of an axe head.

  Again he hovered this hand above the axe head, and once again he searched within himself for the [ Fabrimancy ] skill.

  Once again the air blurred, and once again the stones began to warp and meld, as a white light laced its way like twine between the newly shaped axe head and the haft. The white light cooled until it was a matte grey strap of what looked like a bit like leather, a bit like woven string, a bit like glue, and a bit like cloth all at the same time, while never looking totally like any particular one.

  The axe head was bound to the haft.

  The stone axe had been made.

  He’d crafted it.

  [ Item Lost: 3x Stone ]

  [ Item Lost: Wooden Haft ]

  [ Craft Successful! ]

  [ Item Crafted: Stone Axe | Item Quality: Junk | A crude axe with a dull edge, useful only for felling the most basic of trees. ]

  Not the highest praise…But still.

  He picked up the axe.

  [ Item Equipped: Stone Axe ]

  Levan let out a slow breath. The weight was off. The thing was imbalanced, and when he ran his fingertip along the stone edge, it took so much effort to even try to draw blood that he gave up. But it was reassuringly heavy. It felt right in his hands. Felt real.

  “Okay,” he said, “Now—“

  He stopped, and glanced down at the hand holding the axe.

  It was shaking. Shaking violently.

  He brought up his other hand. It was shaking violently, too.

  [ Codex > Magic, Skills, and Abilities > Costs | Everything has a cost, including magic. Fabrimancy uses magic to replace materials and skills. Using Fabrimancy will apply (Exhaustion) based on your Fabrimancy and Crafter skill levels. At higher levels, it will include Discipline and Ingenuity. Current Fabrimancy Skill Rank: Novice. Current Crafter Skill Rank: Novice ]

  [ Codex > Status Effects > Exhaustion | A negative status effect that wears gradually on your body and mind. ]

  Now that he knew what to look for, Levan could see the signs.

  It wasn’t bad—the shaking had already stopped, and the wave of tiredness that had crashed into him briefly was settling down.

  Still, like the painful Aether Particulate from Aetherial Crafting, the (Exhaustion) from general crafting was something he’d have to keep an eye on.

  [ Task Complete! ]

  [ Craft: Stone Axe, 1/1 ]

  [ Congratulations! You have completed a Task (Crafter’s Path)! ]

  [ Reward: Unlocks Crafter’s Path 2.1 through 2.6 ]

  The Crafter’s Path appeared once more in his mind, the stone backdrop with the network of tasks, achievements, and rewards.

  The first node glowed gold for a moment, before changing from shadowy incompletion to a solid, colorful fullness.

  Then a series of lines stretched out like branches from the Stone Axe node, leading simultaneously to a handful of other tasks that all shared the same “level” on the Crafter’s Path.

  Levan scanned the various options, hopping from one to another, trying to pick which path to go down next.

  “Just have to rub it in, huh?” he murmured, examining the last one.

  He glanced down at his knuckles, still scraped and red.

  Every single task he could take on next shared the same objective.

  [ Task: Chop Down Tree, 0/1 ]

  He had the axe now, and he was proud of that, but still…

  [ Codex | Advice: Utilize tools designed for specific tasks, such as using an axe to fell a tree. ]

  “You’re a smarmy little punk sometimes, you know that, Codex?”

  [ Codex | Unarmed Combat Skill: Novice | 5% to Rank 4 ]

  [ Display List of Activities that have increased Unarmed Combat Skill? ]

  “No.”