[Beastborne: Voracious] (Book 5) Chapters 47-49 (Patreon)

Chapter 54

It didn’t take long for everything to get set up.

Hal and Hamrin had collected a few onlookers who were interested in what they were doing and were watching the two with curiosity. Above the first field was a net Hal had created that would carry and drip mana down like a gentle rain onto the plowed fields below.

Hamrin had already whipped up a small supply of seeds and the workers assigned to this farm had done an excellent job getting everything ready in such a short time.

Hal gripped one end of the mimic wire he created and looked over at Hamrin. “Moment of truth.”

He sent a trickle of his recovering mana into the wire and watched as a faint blue glow surrounded it. As it reached the tiny holes Hal had evenly spaced along the wire, tiny droplets of mana leaked out and fell to the planted rows of crops below.

It took around 300 MP to fully saturate the net of this field, but that accounted for filling the wire as well. Once the wire was saturated, it was a steady, slow drip. Whenever the wire was over-saturated, Hal could feel pressure build up in his palm where he was funneling his mana.

If he didn’t push too hard, the mana stayed within the confines of his own body until the wire could accept more.

“It works!” Hamrin whooped and practically jumped with joy. “I can’t believe it works on the first try. This is just a prototype!”

Hal grinned to himself, pleased at the result. Because, before their very eyes, tiny green shoots were creeping up through the dark soil. “That was fast.”

“I told you,” Hamrin said proudly. “These are some of my pride and joys.”

“You brought these seeds from elsewhere?” Hal asked.

“Of course. I always have a few seed packets on me wherever I go, you never know when you’ll need them.”

Hal stared at the man for a long moment. “You are a curious one, Hamrin, but I’m glad you’re here all the same.”

“Me too.”

The rest of the day was spent working on improvements to the netting. Getting a more stable drip system set up was paramount. It didn’t take long for them to start noticing patches where the mana collected more heavily and those where it was thin.

By the next day, the majority of the crops in the field were ready to harvest. Hal couldn’t believe his eyes. A young man was carting a rather rough-and-tumble version of a wheelbarrow between rows of… Hal didn’t know what they were.

“[Levicabbage],” Hamrin told him. “Levitates once it’s ripe. See that knotty looking string? That’s all that’s holding it still. I already told the farmers what to do. Just watch.”

Round orbs of veiny red cabbage, like the oddest field of balloons Hal ever saw, were swaying in the gentle yet freezing cold air. The farmer simply reached out with a pair of shears to snip them one by one. Freed of their root, they stopped levitating completely and fell into the farmer’s hand.

One by one the roots were snipped, and the plants harvested with a minimal amount of effort.

“They’re far more nutritious than your typical cabbage, which in itself is full of—”

“Do you have more?” Hal asked. He wasn’t a fan of cabbage, but if they could grow more than half a field of the stuff in a day, that was nothing short of a florking miracle.

“Tons, but there’s also other vegetables and fruits I would like to try out. However, I am concerned about the monsters. There is a large amount of mana we put into the field, and even if you’re very careful, there’s only so much—ah, there it is.”

Hal saw it too.

The ground began to bulge and writhe as a green creature, a mass of roots and leaves reminiscent of a venus flytrap, broke through the surface in a spray of earth.

Raising his hand, Hal cast Anvil Lightning on the thing before the farmer knew what was going on. There was a thunderous CRACK as the bolt of concussive force hit the creature and then the field was raining burning leaves and plant viscera with a wet slapping sound.

You defeat the [Aberrant Plant | Lv.8]

You gain 300 Experience Points.

You earn 30 Sparks.

Hal’s eyebrow rose at that. It wasn’t much EXP, but it was sure as hell better than risking your life out in the wilds. Especially for the people who were just starting out, 300 Experience was generous.

Granted, he was a lot stronger than the monster, but anybody in Brightsong should have no problem dispatching a monster like that.

No monster essences though, maybe it was just an unlucky kill or maybe he couldn’t get any essences from it?

Needs more testing.

“Wait!” Hamrin said, putting his hands on the fence around the field and leaning in. “Look at the stunted plants, Hal.”

Fingers still tingling from the spell, Hal followed Hamrin’s gaze and there he saw what Hamrin was so excited about. Where the monster’s corpse had rained down and melted into the ground, the crops were growing at a remarkable rate.

The shoots that had been there this morning were forming layer after layer of red leaves. It was astounding and seemed, to Hal, even better than the mana net they had created.

And it gave Hal an idea, one he had thought of putting away for later but now was rethinking his decision. “Hamrin,” he said slowly, thoughts spinning, “have you ever experimented with the monster farms you accidentally created?”

“Oh no,” Hamrin told him severely. “It’s much too dangerous. We always cull the monsters and destroy the fields. Of course, the fields aren’t actually outside, but in small rooms in the Tower, you see. So any monsters are usually quite easily spotted and their effect kept minimal.”

Hal gestured to two adventurers wearing the red insignia of the Royal Knights headed by Durvin and Ashera.

“Sir?” one of them asked as they approached.

“I’d like the both of you to patrol this field today, if you would be so kind and keep the farmers safe. There will be more monsters. Kill them but don’t touch their bodies.”

An odd look passed between the two, but they hopped over the fence with alacrity and did as Hal asked.

“You think there will be more?” Hamrin asked. Then he saw Hal gripping the lead of the mana net. “Oh. You’re going to make more.”

“Yup. We might be going about this all wrong, Hamrin.”

This time it only took an hour with Hal supercharging the wire, thanks to having a full tank of MP, for another set of monsters to appear. Unsurprisingly, these were in the same mana-rich areas that they had been previously working to get rid of.

The Royal Knights-in-training rushed to the scene and dispatched it with all the prejudice you would expect of a unit of adventurers charged with protecting Brightsong, but usually unable to do much fighting.

Hal grinned to himself as not only did the two fighters gain Experience from their efforts, the cabbages that grew around the death of the monsters were nearly double the size of the previously harvested crop.

Letting the wire drop, Hal turned to Hamrin while requesting one of the watching dwarves to channel as much mana into that wire as dwarvenly possible.

“Then I get to whack a plant too, aye?” he asked hopefully.

“If you like,” Hal told him. “But tell the guards that I said so, okay?”

“Aye!”

Hamrin hurried up to Hal as he walked back to his cottage at a fast clip. Vorax sniffed the air, having scented monsters in his normally peaceful little home. Sensing none that were alive besides Hal and Vorax, the mimic cloak went back to sleep.

“What are you thinking, Hal?”

“I’m thinking that we’ve got it backwards,” Hal said, pushing open the door to the cottage and sitting back at the workbench he had nestled in the corner. It was a rough assembly of planks and timber nobody needed, and was a large enough surface that he could do most of his Bonecrafting on without getting in the way.

The cottage itself was cozy, not large, but not small either. However, with a tiny kitchen, an area that could generously be called a living room beside the fireplace, and the bedroom—which was more like a corner of the room with a bed—there wasn’t much room for anything else.

It was bigger than his studio back in Seattle and had far fewer spiders. He really hoped there wasn’t a spider season in the Shiverglades.

The addition of the workbench didn’t sit well with Noth, but she tolerated it and he saw that she had set some of her potion bottles from her Alchemy work there.

Making sure not to bother any of her things, Hal set to work again. But this time, he didn’t bother to make a net. He created a large bone blank of mimic essence in the shape of a beam roughly an inch to a side.

“Given the size of the field and the issues with production,” Hal said as he worked, “we used something like 200 to 400 mana just to get the crops enhanced, right?”

“More than I figured, but the results speak for themselves,” Hamrin said, leaning against the wall and watching with the same look of fascination whenever Hal did Bonecrafting around him. “Even in my experiments, the crops never grew that fast.”

“Yes, but the monsters appeared in an hour or two of high saturation, maybe 200 MP. That means, for the same amount of time and even less mana, we can create more crops, while also generating monsters to slay.”

Hamrin frowned. “But monsters—Oh. Huh.”

“If we can concentrate the mana to a few locations, spread out enough that they don’t overlap too much, then we should be able to predict where the monsters will spawn, right?”

With the bone blank in front of him, Hal began the second stage and shaped it into a long pole with a spiked bottom to make it easier to drive into the cold, hard dirt.

Hal looked up at him. “The Shiverglades are deadly. Only the most experienced among us can go out safely and even then, it’s a risk. But this? This gets us food, and grants Experience to those working there besides the farmers. The big ‘if’ is whether or not we can reliable put the monsters where we want them.”

“If we have somebody patrolling, wouldn’t that be enough?”

“No, because soon enough, we’ll have multiple fields to cover. We want the monsters somewhere we can control. Hunting across the fields doesn’t seem like a great use of time. Granted, I could be wrong. But if we send a strong surge of mana into the immediate area with these spikes, we should be able to bind the monsters’ spawn location, as it were.”

Hamrin looked at the spike, then Hal thoughtfully. “That’s… not something I would have ever thought of. Farmers are not strong usually and fighting monsters seems like a risk they wouldn’t wish to take.”

“Normally quite true, but even a farmer should want to get some Experience and Levels, right? Not everybody can pick up a sword and be an adventurer, going off to far-flung places. So what if we can offer Levels, Experience, and [Sparks] to people who aren’t adventurers? People who don’t want to go out into the wilds to kill things and risk getting killed in turn.”

“How will we do that? You saw that monster. It was Level 8.”

Hal glanced at him. “You saw it’s Level?”

“It’s a Tower trait most of us learn, lets us see monster Levels so we can better pick our targets.” Hamrin scuffed his shoe on the floorboards. “Those of us who were lucky enough to have an affinity for combat magic, that is.”

“You’re going to help us make something much better than anything the Tower ever dreamed of, Hamrin. And all because you don’t have an affinity for combat magic. Remember that.”

Chapter 55

Hal expected Athagan to complain. The dwarf had asked to speak to him a day or two after they started working on the monster farms.

He had been expecting the dwarf to get antsy over the fact that he was the last one to get his soul fragment back. Admittedly, Hal felt more than a little guilty, leaving him twisting in the wind about it.

The dwarf had plenty to work on, but it was clear that Hal had a new pet project that was consuming more than just his time and energy. Everybody from the lowliest worker to those on the Council wanted to take a turn on the monster farms.

It was a bit of safe fun that anybody could engage in, provided they knew how to swing a weapon. The [Mana Anchors] that Hal made had been a stroke of genius and worked incredibly well to effectively concentrate the mana put through the repurposed mimic wire, deep into the ground.

The upside was that the plants around the area grew even faster, and when the monster it spawned was slain, they were triple the size of the initial baseline crops.

Bardan had jumped on it, immediately setting up another farm beside the first two with a different design. This one had smaller fields segmented by stout stone fences, and at the center of each small field was one of Hal’s [Mana Anchors].

The latest prototype looked like smooth wood banded in iron, roughly 15 feet tall and half a foot wide. They could harness an immense amount of mana, dropping the time to spawn from an hour down to 30 minutes.

The seeds only needed to be planted. The watering would happen when the monster spawned and was slain. Killing multiple monsters without harvesting the crops, unfortunately, had ugly side effects.

As was his custom of late, Hal was watching one of the dwarves feeding the anchor with mana while a pair of steely-eyed adventurers from Mira’s group were watching hungrily.

Everybody wanted a turn on the monster farm.

Buffrix was standing by, since it was his turn next. And if there wasn’t so much to do still, Hal could imagine there would be a line of people waiting their turn, wrapping around the farm and toward Brightsong proper.

Eventually, the novelty would wear off, but it was a two-for-one event that you couldn’t beat. You didn’t need to leave the safety of the valley. You gained Experience and [Sparks]—though nobody seemed to have gotten any other loot yet—and most of all, you were doing a great service to Brightsong.

They already had a frightening amount of food, to the point that they were going to need to do something with it soon. Perhaps a feast would be in order.

And anybody who wanted to be a farmer could sign up for a day of work planting seeds and fighting monsters that spawned. The downside was that you needed to plant seeds, feed the anchor, slay the monster, then harvest the crops.

On this particular day, Hal decided to try skipping the harvesting altogether. They were up to the third monster spawn now and the cabbages were like something out of a fairy tale.

Each one was the size of a small child and must have weighed hundreds of pounds. A single cabbage could probably keep Brightsong fed for a few days at least, and there were nearly two dozen of the things.

It was to the point that when the third monster spawned, the adventurers didn’t see it at first because of the massive cabbages.

When it came barreling at them, all knotted roots and snapping vegetable jaws, the pair dispatched it with a little difficulty. Not only was the field harder to fight in, as they were effectively hemmed in by massive cabbages and shoulder-high stone fences, but the monster seemed stronger as well.

As soon as the creature exploded and its remains splattered over the cabbages, Hal knew something was wrong.

He spun up his Monster Core, tapped Convergence and sent all of his Strength into his coiled legs. He shot through the air to get a good bird’s-eye view just as the cabbages—like large alien eggs—broke open to reveal far more monsters than the two adventurers could have dealt with.

Hal rained down Anvil Lightning laced with Goldflame Dragonfire. The golden lightning split and split again, shattering the bodies of the creatures. With his other hand, Hal used Warding on the two adventurers to safeguard them from the horde of creatures.

He fell to the ground amid the adventurers who had the sense to go back-to-back in a defensive formation. They weren’t weak, but the monsters were well over Level 25, far stronger than what they were used to.

Hand pressed to the soft churned-up earth, Hal used Bloodrake. Dozens of spiked and sharpened chains sprang from the ground to ensnare and hold the aberrations. As he tightened his grasp on them, the chains blended the creatures into a fine paste that pattered to the ground and left a green mist hanging over the field.

It was over in a matter of seconds.

“Thank you, Founder!” one of the men said, bowing low and shaking Hal’s hand enthusiastically.

“That was more than we could have handled,” said the other. “I didn’t know they could do that.”

Hal wiped off some of the green sap from his face and said, “Well, we know now. One monster spawn, two at the most before harvest.”

You defeat the [Accelerated Aberrant Monster | Lv.26]

You gain 890 Experience Points.

You earn 89 Sparks.

You defeat the [Accelerated Aberrant Monster | Lv.25]

You gain 870 Experience Points.

You earn 87 Sparks.

…

You defeat the [Accelerated Aberrant Monster | Lv.27]

You gain 900 Experience Points.

You earn 90 Sparks.

Hal hadn’t expected that much Experience. Even though none of them broke a thousand, there was more than enough to bring him to the next Level of Beastborne. And since he had been helping out the adventurers, he saw the look of shock and surprise as the Experience rolled in for them as well.

Beastborne reaches Level 39.

You have 5 unspent Attribute Points awaiting distribution.

Your HP, SP, and MP are fully restored.

Despite his earlier plans to bring his stamina to 1,000, Hal pushed his Mind up to 90 instead. He had a strong feeling he was going to need every drop of MP he could get his hands on.

That wasn’t the end of the effect, however. The next time they planted seeds, the crops practically sprang out of the soil before they were fully covered as if the monsters had already been slain.

For a full day afterward, the crops were massive and Hamrin was growing increasingly concerned that he was going to run out of seeds as more and more farmers rotated in and out to do round-the-clock harvesting.

“While it’s useful,” Hal said, leaning on the fence, “we need to make sure that whoever is doing a full culling can handle it. It should be no less than a party of people with at least one person who can—if they need to—handle it on their own. That way we can spread the Experience around and also keep the farms working.”

Hamrin was watching Hal with a look of wary apprehension. “That was… Beast Magic?”

“Got it in one,” Hal told him.

“It is… very potent.”

Hal snorted. His veins were burning from the slight introduction of Strain. It wasn’t even very much, not nearly enough for him to get a Strain Affliction, and though it didn’t hurt, Hal could feel a strange, detached aggression building. The desire to bolt out into the Shiverglades and challenge the nearest nest of monsters was unsettlingly high.

Because I don’t have Besal to filter it anymore? I’ll need to be careful about it.

That was about the time that Athagan had found him, covered in green goo and feeling a little too much like a small-town drunk looking for a fight on Saturday night.

Hal had long ago learned to keep quiet when anybody wanted to talk to him. If you said something like, “I know what you’re going to say” and you’re wrong, you look like a jerk. And if you’re right, well… nobody likes to have the words taken out of their mouth.

Besides, it was all around easier to wait until the person requesting your attention actually told you what they wanted to.

Athagan turned on him and said, “I want to take the lead in the farmin’ I got a ton of ideas drawn up, and there are countless ways we can deal with them beasties without having to draw blades every single time. I seen what ye just did, and it’s braw work, Hal, but it ain’t always going to be sustainable to do it like that.”

Hal was more than a little surprised. “What’re you thinking of?”

The black-bearded dwarf whipped out a scroll and began to unfurl it on the side wall of the farmhouse. “Ye see this here? I’m thinkin’ we don’t bother with the soil at all. Stick them anchors of yours here, here, and here, then when the beasties come and get killed, their goodness drains into these troughs here to get collected.”

“You’re talking about making a monster slaughterhouse.”

“Exactly!”

“I’m not entirely sure that’ll work. The blood and viscera of most monsters seems to vanish pretty quickly, don’t they?” He motioned to himself. Already the blood and gore on him was gone, vanished into tiny puffs of purple smoke.

Athagan tapped the blueprint he had pinned to the wall thoughtfully. “Well, we ain’t gonna know if we don’t try!”

Hal laughed and clapped the dwarf on the shoulder. “You have my permission to do what you wish, though only if it works, okay? I’ll make some more [Mana Anchors] and send them over, but just the one slaughterhouse until we know it works.”

No wonder Athagan was excited. While the Shard didn’t give them anymore schematics for buildings, they were able to free-build a multitude of production buildings on their own. The downside was that the buildings didn’t receive the same bonuses as their more defined versions that were Shard-enhanced.

On the upside, it was freeing to experiment.

Hal doubted that Athagan’s slaughterhouse would work. While it would be nice to have monster blood to spray on the crops like some hyper-fertilizer to instantly make them grow, that seemed like it violated some sort of rule or law that the Shard enforced.

A monster farm, however, seemed to fit right in. Killing the monster allowed its essence—not to be confused with monster essence—to flow into the soil and enhance it and any crops therein. It didn’t evaporate into clouds of purple smoke because it was already saturated into the earth.

And a couple of days later, when Athagan was trying out his new slaughterhouse, Hal’s concerns materialized, though not in quite the same way as he would have expected.

Despite pushing as much mana into the spike as he could—Hal wasn’t about to set up multiple wires just yet—nothing happened. The ground was sucking up his mana like a dry sponge, and after an hour, Hal was getting a severe headache like the worst sugar crash in history and there was still no monster.

“I don’t get it,” Athagan said, scratching his head. “There should be a monster on the stone floor right there!”

Clutching his head, Hal said, “I think it has to do with the surrounding area. If you had soil beneath it and some plant matter around, maybe it would work.”

“But then ye couldn’t collect the juice,” Athagan said.

“And therein lies the problem.”

Kicking at the stone wall of the slaughterhouse, Athagan cursed in dwarven and then looked up at Hal. “I’m sorry to have wasted yer time.”

Hal waved his concern away. “It was a good try, but I think we’ll stick with the monster farms for now. You said you had ideas for doing it without needing to patrol. Why not go talk to Hamrin?”

Behind the spectacles perched on the edge of his nose, the dwarf’s eyes twinkled. “Aye, I’ll do just that!”

Chapter 56

The following week was probably the busiest Hal had ever been. In between enhancing his Bonecrafting and making more [Mana Anchors], [Mana Batteries], and [Mana Conduits] to go with the aforementioned two items, he was working on setting up the monster farms.

And if that wasn’t enough, he was actively draining the [Magicite] he had every chance he could in order to keep his Kol’thil Level as high as possible. It had turned out that Tristal gave him a rather large [Magicite] that was already full of aether.

After Hal finally drained it, he saw how slowly it recharged. It was still better than using EXP to fuel his Sigils, but even with the clunky and cumbersome item, he couldn’t use more than a few powerful ones each day. He could store the aether for later and use it when they would really count, but then his Level would lag behind.

Then there was the training with Val, Dale, and Tristal. The Silver Founder was exceptionally skilled at illusions, to the point that even Hal struggled to tell which was real.

This proved to be an excellent training method for Hal to get accustomed to his newly released essences and for the other Beastborne to slowly try out using her powers without a Khaeros.

Unlike Hal, who no longer suffered when he gained Strain, Val needed more time between each cast of her Beast Magic, but she also had wildly different essences and spells than Hal.

That could have explained it, but Hal thought that the difference was one of tolerance. Val, despite being strong, hadn’t gone through what Hal did. She hadn’t gone to the Abyss, suffered Kol’thil Bleed, regaining a Monster Core, or anything else Hal had.

The Kindred Dream had explained that the Beastborne Class was meant to function with a Monster Core. And Val didn’t have one at all. Probably never did, just like Hal.

And now Val wasn’t just missing a Monster Core that granted Spirit as a magical resource, but a Khaeros, too.

He desperately wanted to fix Val’s missing Monster Core. It was one of the main drivers behind Hal working on his Aetherochemy again.

Unfortunately, seeing as his Aetherochemy had stalled at Level 10, that endeavor was going to be out of reach for some time. And that was despite the added work he was putting in alongside his training, Bonecrafting, and overseeing the rapid expansion of Brightsong.

So far, Aetherochemy hadn’t granted the usual Perks every fifth Level as he was used to. It wasn’t until he reached Level 10 Aetherochemy Skill that it gave him something he was eager to try out. It wasn’t a Perk necessarily, he didn’t get to choose it, but it enhanced the skill all the same.

[Combinator]

Permits the creation of Fusion Quests.

[Fusion Quests]

The Worldshard of Aldim is a pale shadow of what it once was. The Shard has changed time and time again, with each iteration weakening it further. You can recapture a fragment of its elder glory, instilling it in yourself or those you choose to Advance.

Doing so will Anchor yourself and those who you allow to undertake Fusion Quests to Aldim, enhancing its Level and Rank in the process with each successful Fusion Quest completed. The amount of Aetherochemy Experience gained depends on the difficulty of the Fusion Quest.

Only one Fusion Quest can be ongoing at any time.

Sitting in the cottage, Hal stared at the notification again. This wasn’t the first time that he had looked at it. He looked at his own Fusion Quest, the one he had stumbled upon like a blind man groping around in a room full of spinning saw blades.

And it was the sole reason he didn’t have any new Perks or Levels in his other Skills despite training them so hard over the past weeks. In a way, it was lucky that he had tried his hand at Aetherochemy soon after the failed attempt at a monster slaughterhouse.

Hal had thought he might be able to make some [Magicite] now that his Bonecrafting was higher, by mixing Aetherochemy and Bonecrafting. While the attempts had failed, they did bring him to Level 10 Aetherochemy and the Fusion Quests that Aetherochemy offered.

Fusion Quest: Osseochemist

Before you can attempt to create more complex Fusion Quests, you must first enhance your Aetherochemy and Bonecrafting. By undertaking this Fusion Quest, you will be able to combine the two Skills into a singular Class, or a new Skill. While a Class is more powerful, its requirements are also much steeper.

Obviously, Hal had chosen the Class variant. There was no use in half-measures, and above all, he wanted to get the best there was. The objectives were… staggering. He’d never seen anything require Skill Levels before. Not once.

And in order to create Osseochemist, Hal needed to sacrifice at least 10 Levels. All of them had to be from Crafting Skills. Which was why Hal spent the rest of the week in the kitchens, because his lowest crafting skill was Cooking and he reckoned that would be the easiest one to Level up in as short a time as possible.

He tried his hand at Construction again, helping out with the new cluster of cottages that were going up in a nice little area that overlooked the town hall. With their new tools the dwarves were slowed down by Hal’s “help” but they allowed him to work on his own project with just one or two workers so he could gain as much Experience as possible.

By the end of the seventh day, Hal finally got the notification he had been working for all week.

Fusion Quest Complete: Osseochemist

You’ve fulfilled the requirements necessary to create your new Class, Osseochemist.

Objectives

· 10 Levels in any Crafting Skill (10/10).

· 10 Levels in any Non-Crafting Skill (10/10).

· Bonecrafting Levels will apply bonus Levels (2).

Rewards

· Legendary Class Osseochemist.

· Bonus Levels in Osseochemist (2).

Hal sat down and watched the golden Shardscript flow past his eyes as the Fusion Quest completed. He was grinning like a kid in a candy shop with an all-you-can-eat pass.

New Class: Osseochemist

Combining the esoteric power of an Aetherochemist and that of a Bonecrafter, an Osseochemist is a powerful crafting force the likes of which have not been seen since the time of the Balesians. Able to mix reagents and essences from both creatures and the very aether itself, this Class is a pure crafter with no explicit combat abilities. However, its ability to create is unparalleled and perhaps most expertly shown with the more esoteric Fusion Quests.

Legendary Class Trait: Will of the Stars

+100% MP | +25% MP Regen

+100% Crafting Speed | -25% CP Required

[Accretion]

With each Fusion Quest completed, you gain enhanced Crafting Speed, allowing you to create things faster and faster while simultaneously enhancing future Fusion Quests, allowing a greater degree of change to be enacted.

[Shardsoul]

By accepting and completing Fusion Quests, you are actively working to undo the damage to the Worldshard of Aldim. The Shard, weak though it is, is not without gratitude. For every Fusion Quest completed, you will gain 1 Level in each of your Classes.

And thanks to his 2 Bonecrafting Levels obtained while undergoing the Fusion Quest, his Osseochemist started at Level 2. Though he didn’t receive any Level Up notifications, he did notice the attribute points awaiting assignment.

Of the 10 points, Hal split them between Vitality and Mind, bringing both his HP and MP up.

Hal laughed out loud as he looked at his MP. All that work he had gone through just to hit 1,000 and he had just doubled it!

Likewise, his MP Regen went up from the low 300s over 400. All from that Legendary Class Trait, which was very new to him.

I thought Fabled Classes were the top of the heap?

Turned out that the Shard still had some secrets he had thought he already figured out.

[STATUS]

Hal Williams

Level: 67

Discordant Stone: 18,000 /55,000

Strain: 0/100

Wyrd: 0/100

BP: 31/35

Classes

Beastborne: 39

Oathforger: 16

Osseochemist: 2

Novice: 10

Resources

HP: 1,060 (+75)

SP: 750

MP: 2,380 (+75)

Attributes

STR: 15

VIT: 77

DEX: 15

AGI: 15

INT: 60 (+8)

MND: 95 (+8)

CHR: 65 (+23)

Regeneration

HP/hr: 177.3

SP/hr: 99.6

MP/hr: 414.8

“Two Fabled Classes and a Legendary one?” Hal shook his head. He couldn’t believe his luck. Of course, it had been a lot of grueling work, slaving over the stove to make various foods, working with his hands to put up another cottage and all the while knowing he was holding up the good working people of Brightsong.

He tried his best, but without an ability to gain Levels in those skills, he sucked at them just as much as he did the first time he tried to help out.

Not to mention all the training with his combat Skills that were siphoned off by the Fusion Quest. But in the end, it had been worth it.

He finally had all 3 Classes filled out.

At least those building the new cottages and weren’t too bothered. Just having Hal join the crafting band granted them a band buff called [Master in the Building]. It offset his weak Construction Skill, but only just.

[Master in the Building]

-10% Material cost.

-10% CP cost.

+15% Epiphany chance.

Now he could do so much more. With double his MP, he could create more complicated and abstract Bonecrafting—

Wait, do I still have Bonecrafting?

There, staring him plainly in the face, was a complete and utter lack of Bonecrafting skill. In its place, however, was a very welcome new skill to go along with his new Class.

Osseochemy was not only a new Skill, but it had also combined the previous Levels of his Aetherochemy and his Bonecrafting into one massive Skill. Now it was his third highest at Level 46, behind Leadership at 58, and Beast Magic at a painstaking 49.

Hal hissed through his teeth at the implications of that. Is there something more I can do with my Fusion Quests? Could I actually fuse other Skills together?

It was in the name, after all, but it sounded insane.

To be able to collapse two or more skills into a singular one would be game changing. Not only would he gain Levels faster than before, but he could probably create entirely new skills.

Could he make a Founder skill out of Leadership and Persuasion? Or would it require more, like Deception and Intimidation as well?

Was there something even grander that he was missing? I’m thinking too small, aren’t I? Just a few skills combined would be great, but if I could combine them all into their relevant categories….

It was almost too much to hope for.

The skills on Aldim were separated into five distinct categories: Survival, Combat, Magic, Crafting, and Social.

Survival contained things that, as the name suggested, were survival oriented. Stealth, Perception, the eponymous Survival, just to name a few. And for reasons Hal didn’t quite grasp, that was where his Manatree and Flight skills were located.

Combat, on the other hand, was all the physical battle skills that he possessed. It held only one more skill than his Magic category did, which only had three skills, and that third one, Darkweave, was quite a pain.

It seemed to have a great amount of potential, but it reduced his MP regen by 2% per level. At its current Level 3, he had 94% of his normal MP regen and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it.

It was doubtful that if he combined the skill with its neighbors, Enfeebling and Beast Magic, that he could improve it.

If anything, he might make it significantly worse.

Then there was Crafting, which was ruled by his newfound Osseochemy and his older Tactician Skills, at 46 and 30 respectively.

His largest Skill branch by far was Social. That was where he had Leadership, Intimidation, Monster Handling, and all the rest. What would it even mean to combine them? Would it mean he’d only have 5 total Skills to Level up?

And what would happen to his Perks?

Hal looked at his Bonecrafting and saw all the Perks were still there. He still had the initial discovery bonus of Bonecrafting. It granted faster EXP, crafting speed, and high-quality rate as well, only it now said “Osseochemy” instead of Bonecrafting.

So I just improved not only my Bonecrafting by giving it new Levels, but also my Aetherochemy which is now considered 46 instead of 10? Awesome.

If he made things out of standard Aetherochemy, he would be increasing his ability to make all the [Mana Batteries], anchors, and wires that he wanted. And the same was true of Bonecrafting.

That means the things I struggled to do with Aetherochemy should be easy now, right? Even without the bonus from the Aetherochemy Crafting Chamber.

It made him more than a little curious to try out the crafting chamber again, but those monsters were way too strong for him. He needed to be strong, even stronger than he currently was if he was going to stand a chance getting back to that chamber.

At least I have a goal now. That is, until Hirash shows his hand and attacks again. Tristal doesn’t think he will, not so soon, but she didn’t see the hatred in his eyes. Hopefully I have enough time still.