CHAPTER 21

Beginning to see a trend, Riven wasn’t surprised when the clothes makers, seamstresses, and tailors had similar advantages. They could create articles of clothing that self-repaired or self-cleaned, perfectly fit whoever wore them, smelled certain ways, camouflaged the wearers, or gave various buffs and resistances. There was even a thermally heated blanket one could make without electricity, which in Riven’s opinion would be a great Christmas gift if he ever celebrated Christmas again.

Mapmaking…now, this was where it got weird. There were different types of maps to be made, and they required different ingredients and materials to create, as well as what the Elysium administrator considered a semiperfect knowledge of the area being scouted out. Sure, someone could just draw a map on a piece of paper and call it a day—but mapmakers specialized in creating maps one could utilize in different ways. Some of them could track your movements between towns. Others could be edited to your liking as blank slates. Some could be incorporated into your peripheral vision, and others were even three-dimensional or a combination of all the above. This one caused Riven pause, and he seriously considered stopping there to take a deeper look at it—but then realized it required a lot of advanced math. Riven was by no means stupid, and he’d never been bad at math while he’d been in class, but he had dropped out of high school to take care of his dying mom before her vanishing act. So he doubted he’d be able to understand the concepts here after looking them over.

Then, coming back around to the last of the bunch, was totem making. Frankly, he found it hilarious that totem making was even a crafting option at all. What kind of benefits could someone get from that? What kind of game world would invoke that, of all things, as a craft? Was the administrator being serious about this?

But then a remnant thought concerning channeling items crossed his memory—one brought up by the spell tomes he’d used to learn Wretched Snare and Bloody Razors. Totems were one such channeling item that he could utilize to emphasize his spells…and his interest was immediately piqued.

He also hoped the book had some information he could use concerning his porcelain vase. It was a small hope, one that probably wouldn’t yield results, but he had little else to go on. Placing the object on the table beside the book that had a pot drawn onto the front in black ink, he opened it up and began to read. Surprisingly, what he found…was rather fascinating.

“Well, goddamn, he’s living the life!” Riven snorted a few laughs and smirked at that last sentence, then flipped through the pages some more. It was time to expand his horizons.