Book 2 - Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Brin twisted the blowpipe in the furnace, letting more of the molten glass stick onto the end. The glass had a strange texture when it was so hot, moldable like thick clay, but sticky like taffy.

“That’s probably enough,” said Ademir the [Crafter] from behind him.

Brin drew out the blowpipe and immediately started turning it, trying to get the glass to move into a uniform cylinder, but it stayed sort of lopsided. Ademir made this all look so easy.

He moved it to the maver, a fancy word for a special plate of mild steel, that he used to roll the glass into the approximate shape he wanted.

“Cool it down,” said Ademir. He didn’t mean the glass, he meant the pipe, so Brin dutifully brought it over to a specially made bath that could cool the pipe without touching the glass on the end. Brin’s [Heat Resistance] meant that the hot pipe wouldn’t really hurt his hands, but Ademir didn’t want the heat to warp his tools.

That done, he brought it back to the maver to roll it again. He wanted a cylinder shape; they were making bottles today. When he was satisfied with the shape, or at least satisfied that this was as good as he was going to get it, he put his mouth to the tube and started to blow. It puffed out like a ball, so it was back to the maver, then back to blowing, again and again until a glass tube took shape.

The next step involved rolling the glass while pressing down with a wooden spoon to give the bottle a nice neck.

All finished, the bottle looked… fine. The glass was too thick and the neck was too angular. Better than he’d expected, but worse than he’d hoped. Nothing like the uniform and polished bottles that Ademir could put out, but it would definitely hold water. And while Ademir’s bottles were very nicely shaped, the glass itself was clouded. For high quality glass, the town still had to order out of town, and that wasn’t something anyone would be able to do for a while on account of the massive undead army hiding in the forest.

It was hard sometimes to stay inside to make glass, knowing what he knew about the danger they faced. Sometimes he wished he was still a [Scarred One], just so he knew he wouldn’t be helpless if the army invaded. He knew that was dumb. If that army came, one more fighter wouldn’t make a difference. He’d given that power up for a reason, but it still gnawed at him sometimes.

“Does it ever bother you that you can’t fight?” asked Brin.

“Well sure. One sec” said Ademir, while finishing up some kind of tin gear he was fiddling with.

It had probably been a rude question, but Ademir wasn’t the type to take offense. He was a calm, easy-going sort of guy. And Brin was really curious. While no Common Class was very good at fighting, especially at the lower levels, [Crafters] couldn’t fight. Brin was certain of the exact details, but that was the trade-off for why [Crafter] could be so effective despite how broad it was. It was crazy to him how comfortable Ademir was, being a pacifist in a world where everything wanted to kill you.

Honestly, the most offensive thing about Ademir was the fact that he wore his sandy blonde hair in a long ponytail in the back, even though his hairline was drastically receding in the front. Really tacky, but somehow he pulled it off.

Ademir set down his tools. “Does it bother me? A little, sure. Sometimes I worry, anybody would. But if everyone took combat Classes then life would be a mess. There are people around me who can defend the town. I let them do their job, and focus on what I can do.”

“What if something happens, though, where someone tries to hurt you?”

“I would run away. But Brin, I’ve been a [Crafter] my whole life since System Day, and that’s never happened. Sure, I’d like to be able to stand up for myself just in case, but how much am I willing to sacrifice for that? The gods are kind. They’ll give you anything you want. Just not everything you want. You just need to figure out what you want most.” Ademir shrugged. “I like making stuff.”

With Hogg, Brin would probably have something snarky to say to that, but it wouldn’t be the same with Ademir. The man had an earnest way about him that let him deliver tacky lines like that and just like his hairline, somehow pull it off.

“Thanks,” Brin said after an awkward pause.

The bottle was as done as it was going to be. He put on some large leather mittens–even with [Heat Resistance] he couldn’t touch molten glass with his bare hands. He cut the bottle off of the blowpipe and put it in a kiln, where it would cool slowly over the next day or so.

It was honestly very convenient that Ademir already had all this set up. He had a wide, spacious workshop, and half of it was set up for glassworks. The furnace that he’d used to make the bottle was one of two. The other was much larger and more elaborate; it could make five-by-five-foot glass sheets, which would then be trimmed for windows.

Even the windows would be foggy, though. They’d let in light but not let you see through them. Brin didn’t have a lot of long-term crafting goals; his [Glasser] Class was temporary, but one thing he’d really like to do was help Ademir make crystal clear glass someday.

Alert! [Shape Glass] leveled up! 5 -> 6

“Nice! I leveled up [Shape Glass]!” said Brin. “Not that I can tell what it does. When can I start moving glass with my mana?”

“At this level, [Shape Glass] mostly helps you use regular tools better. It’s not until much, much higher levels that you’ll be able to do things like what Oleg can do with wood, for example. I know it feels like you’re not making progress, but you’re already leaps and bounds better than where we started three days ago. Try not to compare yourself to people who’ve spent decades building themselves.”

“You’re right. Thanks,” said Brin.

“Why don’t you try one more, and then we can call it a day?” said Ademir.

Brin opened his mouth to protest. They’d only been working for four hours! But he shut it again. Four hours was a normal work shift for normal people around here. It was customary to switch tasks if you were going to work more than one shift. Besides, he had no right to capitalize all of Ademire’s time.

He dutifully spun his next bottle, only this time when he started to blow it into shape, he felt something. A small feeling of resistance against his magic. If he hadn’t used so much magic to hold his body together back when he’d been the [Scarred One], he probably wouldn’t recognize the feeling. This was his magic feeling something it could interact with. He pushed, and the bottle started to expand.

“Dont–” started Ademir.

Before he knew it, Brin’s mana quickly zeroed out, leaving him gasping and weak, but the glass just kept expanding. A ball puffed out on the side of the glass, turning black. More bubbles erupted, each of them rough and black, like enormous festering tumors. The air turned sulfurous, and then one of the bubbles popped, sending black slag to fall to the floor.

Ademir got a pan underneath it just in time to save the wooden floor, but the glass on Brin’s pipe was thoroughly ruined. A waste.

Ademir sighed.

“Sorry!” Brin said sheepishly.

“It’s fine. Everyone does this their first time. You’ve learned your lesson, right? [Shape Glass] takes time! Just keep working and it’ll happen naturally. Trust me.”

“Sorry. But what happened?”

“You shaped glass. That’s what your Skill says, right? Only, you don’t have years of experience working with glass. Shaping Skills don’t give you anything for free. It’ll work based on your knowledge of glass. You don’t know it inside and out, how it moves, how it flows, what good glass looks like and what could make it go bad. Really the only thing you can do with glass now is inject chaos into it.”

Brin looked at the black pile of slag on Ademir’s tools. This could still be useful in a pinch, maybe. As a distraction or something.

“I’ll clean it up,” said Brin.

“You will,” Ademir agreed.

Apparently the System believed that you learned more from failure than from success, because he got a few notifications.

Congratulations! Through training you have increased the following attribute:

Magic +1

Level up! Level 4 -> 5.

+2 Strength, +2 Dexterity, +2 Vitality, +2 Mental Control, +1 Will, +2 free attributes.

It was a satisfying spread, all things considered. [Glasser] gave one Dexterity, one Mental Control, and one free attribute per level. Then another free attribute came from being human, and the rest of that came from his [Warbound] title, so even with a Common Class, he was still getting a Rare Class’s amount of attributes. It sort of hurt, though, because [Illusionist] would have given him much more than that.

Brin put his free points into Magic.

Congratulations! You have earned a new Skill. Please select from the following.

Upgrade - Shape Glass

Increased ability to transform glass. Increased ability to move glass. Improves mana efficiency.

Upgrade - Heat Resistance

+50% increase to heat tolerance.

Estimate Readiness

You gain the ability to know approximately when glass is ready to be removed from the furnace.

Brin read Ademir the options while he cleaned the slag off of the tools.

“I’d take the upgrade to [Shape Glass],” he said. “[Estimate Readiness] is a waste of a Skill point. You’ll learn to do that anyway. The general rule is to never use a Skill point for something that you can learn to do without it. [Shape Glass] is the core of your Class, so no Skill points you put into that will be wasted.”

“Yeah, I think Hogg is going to say the same thing,” said Brin. He would ask him just the same, though. Now that he wasn’t a [Child] anymore, Hogg was more than willing to share his wealth of knowledge about the System, and Brin was taking full advantage.

He got one more notification.

You have 1 free general Skill. Please choose from the follo–

You have selected General Skill - Inspect

It was nice to finally have [Inspect] back. He’d chosen [Hide Status] as his first General Skill, but that had probably been a mistake. Rumors spread like wildfires in small towns, especially since so much of what had happened to him was tied to the danger the town was in now.

Everyone knew that he had broken the rules and gone out hunting, had stumbled onto an army of undead, and that he and Hogg had barely made it back alive. They also knew that Tawna had manipulated him into taking an evil Class.

Cleaning done, he paused at the door of Ademir’s workshop. Was there a reason to keep going like this? His original plan had been to follow in Hogg’s footsteps and pretend to be a [Rogue] pretending to be a [Warrior], but that ship had sailed. No one would believe he was a [Warrior], or a [Rogue] for that matter. There would be people who believed he still had an evil Class of some sort, and there would be people who could use their eyes and would notice him going to make glass with Ademir every day. Sure, he could have Hogg build a secret underground glass workshop for him to practice in. The old guy would probably do it, Solia save him, but what was the point?

Brin came to a decision. He deactivated [Hide Status], or parts of it anyway. It was kind of convenient. After walking around with his status hidden for two days, the Skill had leveled up and now there was a nice little interface.

Hide Status (2)

Name - Visible

Class - Visible

Levels - Visible

Titles - Hidden

Achievements - Hidden

Notice: Your name, class, and levels are visible to anyone with Inspect.

That done, he walked outside. The city street was busy, with many townspeople heading home after a day of work. The sun was high in the blue sky, and the scent in the air made it clear that spring was on its way.

The cheery weather was matched by the cheery disposition of the people. Even with the threat of the undead looming, no one could quite ignore the allure of a rare sunny day.

Brin braced himself for the shift in attitude when they all saw him. He didn’t have the best reputation around here.

Still, most people ignored him completely. Only one lady stopped and openly stared. She clearly recognized him, although he didn’t know her. He fired off [Inspect], and it told him “[Hatter] Level 31”.

Alert! [Inspect] leveled up! 1 -> 2

He smiled and gave her a wink, and the action brought tears to her eyes. Well, that was uncalled for. He might have one– well, three or four little scars on his face, but he wasn’t ugly or anything.

A man near the [Hatter] turned to see what she was looking at, and a look of shock passed over his face, before it split into a wide grin. What?

They crossed the street over to him, and without a word the [Hatter] folded him into a hug, “Oh, I’m so happy you’re alright!” Meanwhile, the man she was with patted him on the back. “Well done, lad.”

“With what? What did I do?”

The man tapped his nose. “You know. That’s a difficult temptation to resist, especially if you were already in it. And this town really needs a [Glasser].”

Brin laughed in surprise and relief. Oh, right, people would be glad to see he was a [Glasser]. This was why he’d done it, but somehow he hadn’t actually expected it.

Brin learned their names, Mr and Mrs Sandhill, before he managed to disentangle himself, but it wasn’t long before someone else wanted to talk to him, and then someone else.

During what was normally a short walk home, Brin ran into Davi’s Mom, Zilly’s dad, the lady he bought bread from, the [Farmer] he got eggs from, the [Cobbler] he’d only met twice, and three other people whose names he hadn’t even known, and all of them wanted to chat.

“Yes, sir, It is mighty fine weather we’re having.”

“No, sir, it doesn’t hurt. I don’t even feel the injuries anymore.”

“Yes, ma’am, keeping busy. Ademir’s been a saint for showing me the ropes.”

“No, sir, I don’t think I’ll be passing him up anytime soon. It’s a lot harder than I thought.”

“Yes, ma’am, I think I like making glass a lot.”

“No, sir, I think I’ll keep practicing with swords, just in case. It’d be a shame to miss an opportunity to learn from a master like Hogg.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m done hunting in the forest.”

No wonder everyone in this town only worked four hours a day, if it took this long to walk home.

His social battery was thoroughly drained by the time he got to Hogg’s place, but he still had a smile on his face. People in this town could be pretty nice once they stopped thinking he was a deranged psychopath who wanted to kill everyone and eat his own scabs.

Brin heard a happy chirp as soon as the house was in sight, and a two-foot long lizard with rainbow scales darted towards him and jumped into his arms. Brin still didn’t know what to make of the fact that Marksi had legs now. His pet had been a snake when he found him, but everyone just accepted it like it was totally natural. Actually, Marksi wasn’t a snake or a lizard; some kind of mammal with illusion-inducing scales and surprisingly flat humanlike teeth. He curled up in Brin’s arms and purred in satisfaction.

Hogg opened the door, no doubt alerted by Marksi’s chirp. He was in his sixties, although with his high level he aged slowly enough that he still looked to be in his early forties. He was back in his typical black leathers, looking like his typical roguish self.

“Come on!” Hogg said, and waved Brin towards the cellar.

“I wanted to ask you about–”

“Not yet!” Hogg said. “In the cellar.”

Brin still had a complicated relationship with cellars. When he’d woken up in this world he’d had to hide in the cellars of a ruined town to escape the roving undead. Even now, nearly a year later, the cellar was the place he felt the most safe. Hogg didn’t let him sleep down here.

Hogg’s cellar was extra large, with a substantial food storage as well as lots of space to store all his adventuring gear. There was one new addition from the last time Brin had been down here, though. A few chairs had been set in the middle of the floor, and around them was a ring of silver, worked in elaborate carvings and characters he couldn’t read. He recognized it as the magical language, though. So it was a big enchantment of some sort.

“Don’t touch the silver,” said Hogg, who stepped over the circle and sat in one of the wooden table chairs.

“What is–”

“Inside,” said Hogg.

Brin followed him inside, and sat at an opposite chair. It was sort of awkward, two straight-backed chairs pretty close together, without so much as a coffee table.

“What is this?” Brin asked.

“This is a very expensive enchantment I had Chamylla and Toros put together for me. In short, the area inside this circle is sound proof. Completely soundproof. We’re safe from any kind of spying or scrying, magical or otherwise. I know you have questions, and you’ve been pretty patient these last couple days. Thanks for that. Now we can finally speak freely.”

Brin looked at the circle of silver on the floor with new eyes. “So can we talk about the… you know.”

“The [Witches]? Not even they can hear what we say in here. It should even stop people from reading the threads of fate that move based on what we discuss. But let’s shelve that for now; I wanted to talk about your Class. I see you’ve stopped hiding your Class.”

“It seemed like the thing to do. I don’t think I was going to convince anyone,” said Brin.

Hogg nodded, “You should know, the way an [Illusionist] stays alive is by making sure no one ever knows he’s an [Illusionist]. As soon as the Eveladis comes out, it’s all over.”

“Trust me, that lesson was driven home… very painfully. But people are going to figure out I’m a [Glasser].”

“True. And telling the truth now will make it easier to fool them later. Upgrading your Common Class into a Rare Class isn’t unheard of. I’m thinking you turn [Hide Status] back on when you get [Illusionist], and then we tell everyone you have some sort of [Warrior]/[Crafter] hybrid?”

“Yeah, that could work. Is there a [Rogue]/[Crafter] Class that would be more convincing?” said Brin.

“Hm, you know, I might know of something like that. I’ll have to look it up in my notes. Fair warning though, I’m not the only one who knows [Glasser] can evolve into [Illusionist]. As soon as glass comes out, canny people will start watching for illusions.”

Brin shrugged. “I guess I’ll deal with it when it comes. Hey, what Skill should I take? It’s offering–”

“Upgrade [Shape Glass].”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too.”

“Are you still putting all your free points into magic?” asked Hogg.

“Yeah,” said Brin.

“Well, don’t get carried away. Glass powers or not, your magic is just there to fool their eyes long enough for you to get close and shank them in the kidneys. Don’t neglect Strength and Dexterity.”

“I won’t,” Brin promised.

“Good. That’s settled then.”

“So, [Witches]...” started Brin.

“[Witches].” Hogg nodded.

“What can I ask?”

Hogg spread his hand wide. “What do you want to know?”