I kept the information about Xokrist and the fact that I had to pick up another Sacrifice job soon on the side. The first thing I did was look through the list of Augmentations for Power that Kostis had suggested.

It wasn’t that illuminating on its own. The names were fancy, but Kostis had also added helpful descriptions after each of them to help me identify them.

Some I was already familiar with. Mana Drain was as it said on the tin. When using aggressive moves that utilized Power, a bit of mana was drained from the target and added to the wielder’s pool. Essentially, punching someone to steal their mana. If nothing else, it at least sounded rather funny.

Aspected Blows was similar to Gutran’s Manablow, where hitting with enough force wreathed the strike with a selected Aspect. The difference was that using Aspects boosted the effectiveness of the caster’s Power too, kind of like Kostis’s Mana Boost Augmentation.

Another very interesting one was Ranker. Every strike containing the potential to Rank up an Attribute in the middle of a fight? That sounded almost overpowered.

Although not something particularly mage-like.

It was kind of the inverse of Mana Boost—the Augmentation that temporarily raised his Power Attribute’s rank using mana. That reminded me that Kostis wasn’t just giving me a list of potential choices for my Power Augmentation. A lot of the ones on the list had inverses and opposites and tangents that I could potentially go for too.

A very related one was Empowered Mana. Where the use of Power-fuelled blows led to a temporary increase in rank for Aspects.

These all seemed pretty standard to me. Sure, I probably wouldn’t have thought of every single one of those on my own, but their flavours were nothing that stood out to me. Rank increases, boosts, oh and Mana Drain too I supposed. Nothing too crazy.

Maybe I was getting a little too ahead of myself. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder where were the Augmentations about creating shockwaves or landing critical hits with every punch.

Hmm, no. Whatever strange system this world had, it definitely wasn’t a one-to-one copy of game mechanics. I needed to moderate my expectations and think along the lines of what I had seen so far. Something like creating shockwaves with punches was eminently possible with the right Aspect—Aspect of Shockwave?—and Augmentation—Aspected Blows, obviously.

And that was the key, wasn’t it? I had to think very carefully on what I wanted. I needed to figure out how my Power was truly useful for my build.

I spent a good chunk of the morning after I received Kostis’s letter wondering about my potential Augmentation. There wasn’t a time limit on when I was supposed to head over to Xokrist. The treasure-ridding job had been up for a couple of days now and I had time.

Training helped. I ran through exercises of what I was capable of. I sparred with Gutran again, telling him about the Augmentation suggestions I had received from Kostis. He agreed that running through my whole kit, keeping it fresh on my mind, would help me identify the areas I wanted to emphasize with my Power Augmentation.

It really helped. I worked up a bit of sweat with my sparring session against Gutran and did my best to pull out all my stops. I used Infusion to weigh his armour and armaments down, I used Field Manipulation to mess with his motion, I used Siphon to modify my own weight and move twice as fast as I normally should have been able to. And through it all, I noted the main weakness that Gutran had pointed out a few days ago.

Against a stronger, faster opponent, my cast time was going to be a huge drawback. Did it matter that I could weigh down my enemy if they simply reached me before I could use my Aspects? If I was eviscerated before the mana I used turned dark and messed with their motion?

“I see that look in your eyes,” Gutran said. “You’re figuring something out, aren’t you?”

He was never sweaty after our sessions. Normally, I wouldn’t think his serpentine physiology would allow him to sweat, but he was a half-Scalekin like Sreketh, not a full one like Kostis. Still. It looked like he was immune to having his clothes stick annoyingly atop his scaly skin.

I slowly nodded. “I’m starting to figure out what I need to do, yeah. What I need my Power to do. Think you can help me train some more?”

“You think you can do it in one day?”

I considered. “Actually, you might be right…”

“Course I’m right. Figuring out what Augmentation you need is only the first part. Actually acquiring it is a different matter entirely. And you haven’t really solidified it in your head yet, have you?”

I relaxed my fingers from how they had curled into fists. “Not yet, sadly. But I think I’m slowly getting the shape of what I want.”

Gutran’s advice was what I followed. Instead of trying to focus entirely on gaining my new Augmentation and bashing my head against a mental wall, I decided instead to take Kostis’s other advice and make my way to Xokrist.

First, though, I headed over to the Mage Guild.

“New job?” Silhatsa asked.

She looked a little tired after dealing with a group of robed mages who were apparently having difficulty scheduling some sort of exchange program with a different chapter of the Mage Guild in a different location. I hadn’t quite picked up where exactly it was supposed to be.

“Old job,” I said. “New me, though,” I added with a grin.

She laughed with a soft hiss. “Sure.”

I registered myself officially for the Silver-ranked version of the Xokrist job. Hopefully, there won’t be another annoyed Aninta coming after me.

“You aren’t actually the Guildmaster in secret, are you?” I asked Silhatsa rather seriously.

“I wish,” she said. “I’m sure the Guildmaster doesn’t have to deal with magical bureaucratic bullshit every day.”

That was the first time I had heard her get genuinely annoyed at being a receptionist and I didn’t blame her one bit. Service oriented jobs were hellish. That she wasn’t cynical or dour more often was honestly a great testament to her character.

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“No offence,” I said. “But wouldn’t being a Guildmaster mean you’d need to deal with more bureaucratic bullshit? Not your kind, obviously, but on a higher level.”

“Well, I would think so, I suppose.” She leaned over her desk, her light-pink scales glimmering a little like she used rainbow lotion or something. “But there’s the rumour he spends all his days here at the Guild itself,” she said in a lower register. “Which is why you were asking, weren’t you?”

“You got me.”

Silhatsa narrowed her eyes at me. “You aren’t the Guildmaster in secret, are you?”

I stared at her. Then I slowly grinned. “What if I was?”

Giving her a mysterious little wave, I left and headed for Xokrist. Having accepted the job officially, I would have been able to head to Ring Two on my own. Silhatsa had even drawn up a little letter for me in case I ran into any trouble with the guards.

But I swung by the Artificer’s Guild before I headed to the Preservatory. Linak was the sole mage there once again.

“Oh, Ross!” The tall Plumefolk rose from where he was tinkering with a device. It looked like a kettle with its spout angling backwards and topped off with a funnel aimed back into itself. A few glowing runes glimmered around the open head where the lid should have gone. Linak removed his goggles as he greeted me. “How can I help you?”

I greeted him in the Plumefolk language, Sortecarii, which made him smile, before switching back to New Zair. “Nice to see you, Linak.”

Before I could reply, the strange device started pouring out a stream of tea back into itself. The tea grew hotter, bubbling even as it fell, hissing as it re-entered the kettle from the funnel. Soon enough, the whole thing was shaking, including the table itself, as the tea turned into a stream of dark vapour.

“Uh, one moment please.” Linak put his goggles back on before playing around with the some of the runes around the not-kettle’s rim. “There, that should do it.”

The device calmed down as the steam turned back into plain dark liquid.

“That’s not a kettle, is it?” I asked.

“A kettle?” Linak looked confused for a moment. Then his brown eyes widened. “Ah, you mean the water heating apparatus from Claderov. I’m surprised you know about them.” He looked down at his device. “No, this isn’t one of those. Although, I did take inspiration from the water heater’s basic function yes.”

“What did you make?” I asked. I realized that had sounded a bit too rude, so I modified my tone. “Just asking out of curiosity.”

Linak smiled. “It’s a device that’s helping me test a mechanism where containers can keep their contents warm by automatically sensing the content’s internal temperature.”

“Oh,” I said, genuinely impressed. “That’s pretty fancy.”

“Thank you! It would be fancier if it worked, but we’ll get there, I’m sure. Anyway.” He pulled off his goggles again. “That’s not why you’re here.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I thought I’d drop by before heading to Xokrist to see if you wanted to come along. I took the job posted at the Mage Guild.”

“Oh right! I’m not surprised you picked it up again.” Linak began clearing his table and getting ready. “Give me a moment.”

I waited patiently before he finished and then headed off with him.

“You’re not the only Artificer, are you?” I asked as we neared the Preservatory. “I feel like you’re the only one I’ve seen around.”

“I’m actually the Head Mage of our Ring Three premises,” Linak said, his rust-coloured feathers puffing up a bit with pride. “We just don’t have that many people working here. I have two junior mages reporting to me and that’s about it.”

“So there’s a bigger Artificer’s Guild office on Ring Two?”

Linak nodded, beak clacking together. “Correct. They like to stick close to the academy since we tend to work together more often than not.”

The academy was just as I had seen it last time. Big school buildings arranged in wings and sections over wide grounds, each structure wider up top like a tree. Linak led me through the grounds and over the paved path until we were inside the hall lined with suits of armour that saluted as we passed by.

We didn’t go to the same storage-like side room as we had last time. Instead, Linak took me to an elevator, which was literally just an entire chunk of a floor growing a few railings before taking off like a magic carpet. It swerved through the huge corridors and I had a bit of trouble maintaining my balance.

I wasn’t afraid though. Even if I toppled over the rather short railings—they were literally knee-high, for some reason—I had Gravity to keep me safe.

At least the sights I was witness to were a nice distraction. I caught more students in deep blue robes all around the place, some of whom joined us on or deboarded off our elevator as it paused at different floors and areas like a glorified bus. Living paintings greeted us and waved at us. A glowing red sprite shaped like a rabbit settled down on one corner.

At one point, the flying section of the floor broke into different chunks headed off in different directions before reforming at another hallway. Said hallway also had a ceiling that was somehow more transparent than plain old glass could have been.

“Here we are,” Linak said, finally leading me off our flying floor bus in a far-off wing of the academy. “Sorry, they decided to move the artifice lab in the annual restructuring. Funds are a bit tighter for some of us now, so some places got reallocated. Uh, quite literally.”

Farther off though the new artifice lab might be, at least it was a larger, airier room. Though, part of that was likely because they were still in the process of moving things. So many boxes were still left unopened, and there was only a small workplace section that held a table strewn with a bunch of tools.

The younger academists were present though, so that was nice. Both the Ogre and the younger Rakshasa—not the older professor, Arad or whatever his name was—greeted me with recognizing smiles.

“Oh hello,” the Ogre said. “Good to see you again, Mage Moreland.”

The Rakshasa waved at me. “If it isn’t our favourite Sacrifice Mage.”

I waved a hello back at them too.

We weren’t exactly friends, though I didn’t dislike them, so we skipped through pleasantries. Linak brought out the old and used-up treasures that I was supposed to be Sacrificing. We did reprise the same idea as last time. So long as I explained everything about Sacrifice to them, I would get a raise.

That got me thinking, though. “I already picked Silver rank for this job.” I patted my shiny new badge. “Cause I’m a Silver-ranked mage now.”

Ogre and Rakshasa clapped sincerely.

“Congratulations on the advancement,” Ogre said.

“Thanks. But my point is that since I’m already taking this as a Silver-ranked job, were you thinking of upgrading it to a Gold-ranked one if we go with the original deal?”

The academists exchanged a look I couldn’t fully read.

“Fund constraints,” Linak said, slightly apologetically. “Remember?”

“Oh, right.”

Well, I supposed while a Silver-ranked job might be within their limits, Gold might have been a bit too much. For now, we decided to call off the deal and just have me go through the old treasures, without me needing to explain every Sacrifice’s details to them.

Linak brought out a box filled with little faded and cracked crystals. “Old, used-up mana crystals. We’ve got quite a few…”

I picked one and drove my mana into it via Sacrifice. Threads of white magic burned into the little crystal, consuming it and turning into motes of ivory sparkles.

“Interesting…” I murmured, remembering what I had learned about mana cores and such needing processing into forms that were useful and consumable. Were mana crystals collected from the dungeon, or were they fashioned from mana stones?

[ Sacrifice

You have Sacrificed 1 [Broken] Iron-ranked Mana Crystal. Windfall bonus activated.

Reward: 1 minute of external mana threads ]

I blinked at the notification. It was nice that Sacrifice was strong enough that even an item deemed Broken by the Weave was capable of producing a tangible reward. One that I could use.

Although, speaking of use, I only stared at the threads of pure white energy lazily swirling around my hand. External mana threads. My conversation and realization while training with Gutran came back to me. Slow cast times. The shape of my Power Augmentation was becoming clearer and clearer.

I turned to the other academists. “New deal,” I said. “You guys can help me get my Power Augmentation in return for me going over Sacrifice. Sound good?”

They exchanged another look, then grinned back at me.