Wish upon the Stars chapter 7 (Patreon)

Luckily, she didn't want to go immediately. After we set a date we  were dismissed from the executive lounge while the higher ranked members  of our party ate and discussed details. I in the meantime wanted to run  home and talk to Zeke immediately but I knew that wasn't an option at  the moment. I decided to take Jessie down to check out the crafting area  and look over the job board. I figured that might cheer her up a bit.

She  was still looking distracted and upset, so I offered her my arm. "Hey  let's go do something fun? I was going to check out the crafting area  and look at the board down there where people post commissions. Why  don't we go together and we can watch some of the I rank crafters at the  counter work on repair jobs." I shot her a smile I hope was comforting.  "Come on, it'll be fun to see how the different crafting powers work."

She  looked uncertain, but swallowed and forced a big smile onto her face.  It was such a pale shadow of her previous cheerful grin it hurt to look  at, but fake it til you make it was better than nothing. "Sure, that  sounds like fun. I've always been curious about crafting. I bet you'll  see some pretty cool stuff that'll give you ideas for your power too." I  held back a wince, barely. I was going to need to pick up some skill  based crafting knowledge like enchanting or something soon, or else it  was going to look really suspicious when I couldn't actually make shit  on demand.

Non  crafters wouldn't be able to tell the difference between skill and  ability based crafting, and since I was H rank any experienced crafters  that saw me would just assume I'd synergized enchanting with some wood  based power to get the woodworking ability I had. Single skill synergies  didn't alter the power too much so they often ended up similarly themed  to other common powers. I was just glad the results of my scan were  confidential to my intake admins and the guild master, that way no one  but them knew the exact skills I had.

Still,  that was a problem for future Shane. Current Shane had a pretty girl to  cheer up, so when Jessie took my arm I headed for the crafting hall.  Luckily I'd checked out a map of this place online after my last visit,  so I had a basic idea where to go once we retraced our steps back down  to the entrance. Luckily the restrictions on the elevator were only for  coming up, which made sense since anyone lower ranked who was up there  already would be a guest of someone who belonged there.

The  crafting hall, unlike the two high ranking areas I'd been to, wasn't  all fancy and ethereal. It was mostly just a huge room, though it did  have a vaulted ceiling and columns. Still, it was by far one of the most  normal places I'd been so far, and kind of implied that the guild  master's space office and the executive lounge weren't exactly the norm  for this place. I'd just been seeing the higher end facilities and had  gotten a skewed view of how the guild worked. The crafting hall, in  comparison just seemed more...down to earth, no pun intended.

I  liked it. Granted I planned to enjoy those high end facilities once I  got to that level, but for now I preferred the transition from normality  to go a bit slow. From finding out about my heritage, to learning my  mom was still alive, to becoming a candidate and unlocking my powers I'd  been on a roller coaster since a few days ago. The thought of just  getting acclimated to all this nonsense slowly with the other initiates  was pretty nice. Jessie on the other hand seemed absolutely amazed at  the place.

Granted  she'd seen the executive lounge too, but she hadn't been hanging around  the WCP and the The Night Market. I was mostly burnt out on wonder for  the moment, but she still had plenty of it left. We approached the  counters where the I rank crafters were working. They mostly handed  basic repairs from what I knew, but the skills they were using were  still pretty amazing. From what I could tell enchanting and inventing  were taught to most of them to use as a standardized base, further proof  that learning it would be a good call for me.

Inventing  was the mad science version of enchanting, more gears and wires than  runes and light shows. I'd probably end up picking that one up too when I  could, apparently the combinations between the two could create some  pretty crazy stuff. Most of the big name crafters stuck to one of the  other because it took a massive amount of focus to advance even one of  the skills, but that was less of an obstacle for me. Jessie and I  watched with awe as a nearby I ranker used inventing to fix a mechanical  spider, patching a crack in the vial of bubbling pink liquid at it's  center.

I had  to concede that maybe my sense of wonder wasn't burnt out after all  because watching this was amazing. Seeing the inventor's hands flying  along the mechanical parts, disassembling and reassembling mechanical  apparatuses and replacing broken gears was amazing. Inventing, like  enchanting, was a more sedate and repeatable version of a more powerful  ability. Mad Scientists were considered a corruptable subgroup so  inventors were used by hardcore anti villain groups to fill in the gaps,  though they were by and large much less effective at the same level.

I  wondered how they imparted the skills to all these I rankers, because  while they didn't exactly show off everyone's skills to everyone during  the scan (except for people who were open to sharing with each other  like Jessie and I) I doubted every one of them had minor inventing or  enchanting to start with. Was there some sort of teaching power at work?  Did they buy skill crystals for every single newbie? The latter seemed  unlikely based on the price I'd seen for the things in the WCP.

Finally  we made it to the job board, and I smiled at the girl behind the desk, a  pretty pale girl with flowing dark hair and bright blue eyes with a  piercing in her lip and a black corset dress with buckles across the  top. Her very red lips curved up in a friendly smile. "Hi there, welcome  to the logistics department help desk. How may I assist you?" Her voice  was husky and very pleasant, and despite obviously repeating a  rehearsed greeting she seemed like she genuinely wanted to be of  assistance. I liked her.

Jessie  clearly did too, her natural friendliness overpowering her sadness  temporarily as her eyes lit up a bit, breathing some genuine warmth into  her formerly brittle smile. "Hi! My friend Sh- Solomon, here is an H  rank crafter! We were hoping to take a look at the job board to see what  kinds of tasks he'll be accepting once he gets settled in and begins  his crafting career with the guild!" She almost slipped and used my real  name, but caught herself halfway, which I appreciated. I wasn't that  worried about it here, but guild rules made it clear we needed to get  used to it.

The  girl's eyes lit up. "Oh wow you're the new guy! The one who was H rank  during intake! I heard rumors you were a crafter but I didn't believe  it, crafters don't have much of a chance to gather points before they  register." She held out a delicate hand. "I'm Dolly." I took her hand  and shook it, and Jessie did the same. "Lame name I know but my ability  is dollmaking, and crafters don't usually bother with clever or  impressive names. We're usually pretty to the point with ours." Pulling  her hand back she waved us over. "Silly me though, you wanted to see the  board, come on over."

She  led us to a large wooden board off to one side of the desk, absolutely  covered with random scraps over paper, most of them incredibly small  with very dense writing on them. She grinned as she took in our  expressions. "Yeah, it's a cluttered mess I know. We tried encouraging  commissioners to keep the notes tiny so there's more room, but they  mostly just took it as a challenge to write smaller. The oldest and  toughest commissions are at the top of the board, and the more recent  ones are at the bottom. When a top row commission gets solved we move  one of the ones on the next row up to fill the spot so it's usually a  pretty good indicator of what kind of difficulty you're looking at."

She  scanned over the board as she talked, flitting from place to place,  clearly interested in seeing if there were any jobs suited to her. The  bottom half of her dress was a poofy gauzy skirt that showed off her  legs and highlighted the thick combat boots she wore. Upon seemingly  confirming that there weren't any current jobs that she could do she  turned to flash us a bright smile. "Se, any questions? The system is  pretty easy to follow. Oh, and once you break through the seventy five  point threshold you're considered high enough ranked to advertise and  let commissioners come to you."

I  knew about that from talking to Cap but I hadn't realized there was a  specific point value that they used as a benchmark. It made sense  though, the system in general seemed to use point values as watersheds,  so individual groups doing the same wasn't strange. I started browsing  over the jobs, Jessie doing the same as we took in all the strange  commissions available on the board.

I  had to admit there was a huge variety. Everything from more detailed  repairs, restorations, unique builds and artifacts that people were  looking for, and even a few alchemy related jobs asking for healing  potions or elixirs to boost stats. There was an endless number of  possibilities given the vast array of crafting powers. While inventing,  alchemy, and enchanting were much better for general standardized  learning powers like Dolly's were the best individual fits for their  respective niche, and supplemented with a proper enchanting skill could  show even more impressive results in their field.

I  saw a couple of jobs that looked perfect to me, first off, a few of the  jobs seemed to be searching for someone to make a prosthetic limb, and a  few seemed to be for regular mortals. I doubted I could regrow the limb  on an H ranker, but for a normal person or someone in the I ranks I  should definitely be able to help. Because some of the jobs were easily  failed they could be accepted anonymously, with publication of success  being left to the discretion of the crafter if and when they succeeded.  That meant I could take some of the prosthetic jobs and wouldn't have to  worry about people being suspicious that I wasn't an alchemist or a  healer.

Meanwhile  even Jessie had found a few interesting jobs. Her Minor Botany skill  let her make beautiful flower arrangements and some of these jobs were  commissions for special clothing or items for mortals looking to show  off their Ascendant created fashion designs. I saw her looking at a few  dress and furniture requests, and thinking about it I bet she could grow  some very interesting things if she had a basic design to work off. It  was nice to see her taking an interest in jobs that could help keep her  mind off things. I used my scan ring to snap picks of a few of the  prosthetics jobs and get the necessary contact info for me to get some  clients then stood back and let her enjoy herself. She deserved it.