The Way Ahead

Chapter 74b: The Wheel Turns Ever Onward

Huh.

Whats up?

I passed a year on Joriah at some point recently.

You can tell?

The age on my Status by default thinks I was born when I fell to Joriah. I was getting suspicious and wanted to check it. Turns out, my meddling didnt do what I thought it would, it just kept me frozen at 22. I took down my programming, which was also really wrong, wow. Maybe that was why it didnt work? Anyway, I took it down and Status now says Im 1 year old.

Name

Edwin Maxlin

Age

1

Race

Extraplanar Human

Class

Sapper

Attributes

Mana 5

Health 7

Skills

Magical

Basic Mana Sense: 71, Mana Infusion: 74 (Basic Mana Manipulation 9)

Physical

Athletics: 70, Breathing: 68, Flexibility: 65, Nutrition: 59, Packing 76, Seeing: 59, Sleeping: 64, Survival: 66, Walking: 62

Mental

Polyglot: 56 (Language 36), Mathematics: 65, Memory: 49 (Research 50), Visualization: 69

Combat

Bomb Throwing: 39 (Throwing Weapons 48)

Utility

Firestarting: 79, Alchemy: 79 (Improvisation 14), Outsider's Almanac: 111 (Status 22), Identify: 63, First Aid: 75

Happy anniversary? Inion probed.

Thanks, I guess? Not sure what the right terminology for the day commemorating being dropped into a new world would be.

She shrugged, Whatever you wanna call it. I dont think thered be a name for it, and none thatd be in all languages.

Hmm. Well, Ill think about it.

Now, you didnt think that would get you out of training today, now did you?

I mean, I was kind of hoping that

Ha! Get moving!

Edwin sighed. No rest for the weary, it seemed.

Edwin groaned as he lifted a full-grown tree overhead. It had to have weighed something close to two tons, but Packing made it possible for him to support the whole thing. He winced as an ice crystal tore into the skin on his leg as he didnt move it quickly enough. He wasnt blindfolded in this variation of Inions training, but that didnt make it any easier. Really, he wasnt sure how he wasnt sinking into the ground with the sheer amount of weight which had to be concentrated into the space right below his feet.

Why wasnt he sinking into the ground?

Hypothesis: All weight carried by a Packer is concentrated in the space below their feet.

Testing: If all weight is so concentrated, spikes mounted at the bottom of feet ought to sink deep into soil once a moderate amount of weight is applied. The ground itself ought to give way under the pressure of a pinpoint application of massive force.

Test 35: Strapped knifes to feet and stood on the soil. They did not immediately sink into the ground. However, it proved possible to disable this and sink into the soil. Which happened seems to depend on what is expected to happen.

Conclusion: There is some additional support provided that prevents a Packer from sinking into the ground, but only when they think they ought not to. Possible use in water- or airwalking.

Despite Edwins best efforts, he wasnt able to walk on water by expecting not to, though that may well have been a limitation of imagination. He honestly couldnt be sure. However, further testing showed that he could walk on mud with more ease if he expected he shouldnt sink in. However, he would still sink in somewhat, just not as much as normal.

It was frustrating, and the first true evidence Edwin had that his thoughts could genuinely influence the way his Skills impacted the world around him.

Stupid magic, not following the proper laws of the universe. How dare it open an entirely new branch for comprehending and exploiting everything!

It did mean that he needed to redo a lot of his old experiments which had confirmed his hypotheses, on the off chance that they had been influenced into performing as they were supposed to. Fortunately, there werent any major discrepancies with the later check. Or was that just because his expectations hadnt changed? Gah!

Despite himself, he was still having a blast. He was doing actual, really cool research into his own little slice of the universe! He was sloawly learning how to fly! He had magic! He had glowing potions in bowls and bottle (only a single surviving glass vial, sadly) on his shelf!

It had taken some time to rebuild his alchemy supplies, especially as his magical plants stopped bearing so much fruit, but hed managed it in the end. (Edwin had been quite relieved to find that his knockout potion hadnt broken after it fell off the roof, and that he was able to safely retrieve it) Inions training was painful as always, but it still proved to be a fruitful way to pass the time as winter rolled in.

Then, it was an exhausting way to pass the time as winter rolled out.

Edwin was determined to crack open his Skills, and while Packing may have remained stubbornly out of reach, that didnt mean he let his other abilities fall by the wayside. Well, Inions training ensured he wasnt able to let their levels fall by the wayside, but he still had science to perform on them!

While he had varying degrees of confidence with his assessments, he felt that he had a decent handle on how a fair number of his Skills worked under the hood, so to speak.

Athletics increased the density of his cells; giving him more blood, more bone cells, more and tougher skin cells. Hed need a microscope to confirm it, but he felt decent in his conclusion.

Bomb Throwing magnified the speed of combustion reactions, sometimes of his choosing, other times randomly. Breathing had initially helped him absorb more oxygen with every breath and now aided him in using said oxygen more effectively.

Alchemy gave a combination of instincts for how various procedures worked and magnified the results. Construction functioned similarly in that he got hunches as to how something might be best created, but the Skill likewise aided him in said creation. Glues stuck slightly better, saws cut more easily and left smoother surfaces. Firestarting acted as a catalyst, allowing oxidation reactions to happen a lot easier, other than rust (it made him wonder if thermite would be aided by the Skill).

First Aid worked in a similar manner to talsanenris berries, speeding up metabolism in treated areas and magnifying the bodys recovery capabilities. Flexibility made Edwin bendier. His very bones could deform slightly without pain or harm, or not so slightly in other cases, and his joints were slowly becoming almost omnidirectional.

Mathematics felt like a sort of basic calculator stapled to his mind, that could store numbers he put into it and recall them later, like the System had directly connected a computer cable to his brain. Nutrition, Edwin suspected, aided his body in dismantling whatever he ate on a submolecular level and reconstructing it in a more helpful form. Hed managed to stave off hunger at one point by eating a literal stick, despite it normally being indigestible to humans. That meant he should probably still try to get his minerals, but any organic chemicals he would get just from normal life.

Purify made dissimilar molecules repel one another. Hed separated a small pile of sand and dust just by blowing on it, could wash out even bloodstains with trace amounts of water, and he could clean his hands just by Infusing Purify, making all dust, dirt, and stains just flake off and fall to the ground. He still needed some methodology to purify things, but no matter what it was, it worked great.

Edwin suspected that Seeing worked by messing with the Rayleigh resolution formula. How a Skill managed to mess with a fundamental property of optics was something Edwin deeply wished he had a full lab and research group to investigate, but considering he could distinguish two points less than a millimeter apart from the far side of the clearing, which a bit of math told him should be physically impossible given the size of his eyes, he didnt see any other possibilities.

The rest of his Skills he just didnt have anywhere to start with. Be it Basic Mana Sense or Mana Infusion, he simply didnt know enough about mana to make any educated guesses. Its effects clearly depended on what he used it on, but beyond vague common-sense intuitions as to what should happen with magical rocks or water, there werent any apparent physical patterns. He could feel Memory working, sharpening recollections- particularly those from Earth- as he actively tried to remember something, but he didnt know enough neuroscience to begin to guess how that might work. He ran into similar problems with Harvesting, Visualization, Survival, Sleeping

Packing still worked when he walked on his hands, interestingly. It didnt help him support his weight on thin branches, but did when he was in a cluster of vines. It didnt help him keep his footing on slippery surfaces, but if his feet were coated with something slippery, like soap, then Packing would help him.

Hed finally figured out what it was that Packing did to help him avoid sinking into the ground, as well! It sort of spread out his weight, under his entire body, but only so long as the ground was at the same level as his feet. Walking with knives for shoes meant the point of the knife was the bottom of his foot and the weight was distributed across its normal area. But if he was standing on a knife, then it would be driven into the ground until it was flush with its surroundings or it was somehow able to hold Edwin up.

He was still working on translating that to letting him walk on air, but he felt that he was getting close. And after all-

Level Up!

Skill Points 12351473

Progress to Tier 2: 1559/1770 (Avg level: 76/77)

Alchemy 78 83

Athletics 70 81

Basic Mana Sense 68 77

Bomb Throwing 39 49

Breathing 68 75

Construction 68 77

Firestarting 79 90

First Aid 73 82

Flexibility 63 74

Harvesting 66 76

Identify 62 71

Mana Infusion 7383

Mathematics 65 74

Memory 4956

Nutrition 5969

Outsiders Almanac 111 124

Packing 73 83

Polyglot 55 59

Purify 63 75

Seeing 58 70

Sleeping 62 73

Survival 65 76

Visualization 67 78

Walking 62 74

-everything else was coming together nicely.