Blake woke up smiling. Then he frowned. Then smiled again. His emotions were in complete disarray. Physically he felt great. The previous night had been some of the best sleep of his life. The bed wasn’t great, his Talent couldn’t overcome a fundamentally crappy crafting job, but his body had little trouble adjusting to the discomfort.

  His mind well rested and body ready to go he had a positive outlook on life. On top of all of that, he had unlocked his Talent. He had been too worn out the previous night to appreciate, or even notice, but he had fully connected to his Talent following the completion of the leaf bed.

  He now had a decent idea of how his Talent worked and its domain of influence, the term used for what he would become easily skilled at. Crafting. His Talent was centered around crafting anything and everything. It also had aspects of a information domain but the information he got was more of a increase to skill growth than an ability. At least, that’s how Blake saw it.

  This was the source of Blake’s internal conflict. His Talent had nothing to do with combat. Sure there were workarounds to make his Talent combat capable but only by relying on the very things he had hoped to avoid by becoming a combatent. Time and money. The whole reason he wanted to fight was because, at least at first, you could rely completely on your Talent. A pyromancer, one of the most combat applicable Talent types, could go around lighting monsters on fire. No funds needed and it was easy to get started.

  Eventually, he would have needed money but he could have sold monster corpses to cover his needs. He didn’t understand the process of ascending to a higher tier very well but it is well established that the skill and time requirements for a combatant were much lower than that of a crafter or other non-combat roles.

  With a crafting Talent, he would have to learn how to craft as well as source rare materials from combatants and sell whatever products he did make to fund it all. If he made crappy products he wouldn’t be able to afford the materials to keep practicing. And where would he get the initial funds he needed? His parents had died years ago and he had no known family. He had been taking care of himself for years.

  Blake’s mind continued to spiral. On top of all that he was stuck in the middle of a forest with no civilization in sight. After finding nothing after walking for hours the previous day he was having to face the reality that finding a village might be a more difficult task than he had realized. With a crafting Talent he might as well be attempting to search the forest as a normal human. A crafting Talent was of no help in his situation.

  Then again he had a Talent. That was something to be excited about. Blake’s smile broke out again. He might not have been completely stable. Despite feeling well rested and his mind clear the panic of the previous day had still left its mark.

  Trying to ignore his doubts and fears Blake focused on his new Talent and its potential. With a moment of focus, he connected to his Talent getting a feel for what it could do. It was like a whisper, or maybe an instinct, that came with his Talent telling him what was possible. His Talent was broad. Really, really broad. Talents lost strength in their immediate impact the more they encompassed and his Talent was the most extreme form of that he had ever heard of.

  The way Blake’s Talent worked the better he got at crafting the more he could do with it. Every time he made something for the first time he would get information on his craft as well as its uses. He had seen this last night with his bed. When finished he suddenly knew the crafting process more intimately than if he had crafted an identical bed a thousand times. He also got the knowledge on how to better sleep on it as that was its purpose.

  Blake now knew that any future bed he made would be marginally better from now on. Even if the crafting process was identical to his leaf bed it would just be better. More aligned to its purpose. That was the supernatural component of his Talent. The rest fell under the category of skill even if it was an abnormal way for it to work but the enhancement of anything he had crafted so long as he had done so once before had no founding in his own knowledge or skills. It was completely dependent on the reality-bending powers of his Talent.

  This was also the component of his Talent that was neutered because of its breadth. Lots of crafting Talents provided something similar but they had a much bigger impact than his did. Blake remembered reading an article about a woman who had a sword crafting Talent. It only applied to one kind of broad sword but every sword she made was magnitudes stronger than it had any right to be. Even at tier 0 that woman’s swords were capable of shearing through buildings like a knife through warm butter. This applied to every sword of that type she made no matter how bad.

  Blake’s Talent on the other hand might make any future bed he crafted slightly softer. If he had made a sword then maybe it would keep an edge a little better. Maybe. Not only was the effect much weaker but he had to have already made something of that type. He felt that there were other limitations to it but he didn’t know what yet. He would need to experiment to more deeply understand his Talent.

  In return for the restrictions, he could craft absolutely anything. He was not bound to a specific style of sword. He could make any weapon, armor, or utility item he wanted. He supposed that being able to craft anything was too much of a positive for his Talent given there were restrictions on it beyond just having a weak individual impact.

  Blake had been of the opinion that breadth was most important for a Talent but he wasn’t so sure anymore. He just had to hope that by tier 3 his Talent had been more of an impact. Maybe he could be an artificer, someone focused on multi-discipline magical crafting. His Talent certainly leaned that way. Except the magic part. His Talent did not provide access to mana.

  Blake thought for a moment before he set off walking. He wanted to play with his new toy… Talent it was a Talent… but he also didn’t want to give up on reuniting with people. He decided to move back towards the glade he had started at as it was visually distinct and hopefully easier to locate if anyone was looking for him. He no longer wanted to wander around blind in hopes of finding people as he very well could be walking parallel to them and never know. Best to stick to one place for the foreseeable future.

  By the time he had found his way back to the glade, the sun was high in the sky. The trees grew close enough together that the sun didn’t bother him but he would need to be careful of getting a sunburn if he stayed in the glade. He was just glad that his spirit body didn’t need food and water. Blake had grown bored on his walk back and was chomping at the bit to practice his Talent. He had thought of a couple of different things he could try to get a better idea of its limitations.

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  Once he was back at the glade he started immediately. He wanted to begin with the most basic use of his Talent. He wouldn’t try anything he thought would stretch its limits or cause it to fail. He was going to make a shiv. In reality that meant a pointy stick as he didn’t have much to work with but Blake thought calling it a shiv sounded cooler. He grabbed a mostly straight stick about the length of his forearm off the ground. He then found a boulder that was rather rough but with a straight side.

  Rubbing the stick against the rock, Blake gradually wore it down. The rock acted like sand paper and slowly stripped the wood. The whole time he focused on the idea of what he was making as his Talent told him to do. He was making a shiv. It shivved things. Truly he had a profound idea of his craft.

  Blake found it surprisingly tiring work wearing down the wood into a point. He had to apply constant, consistent pressure to make sure there was enough friction to grind down the wood. Not too much pressure though as that could break the stick in two. He learned that the hard way. Twice.

  Eventually after an hour of mind-numbing, muscle-burning work, Blake had his pointy stick. A shiv, he corrected himself. Once he decided that he was done his Talent activated and flooded his mind with information. More prepared than the night before and well rested he was not as overwhelmed.

  He now intimately understood the process of making his shiv. It was honestly kind of embarrassing to him, seeing where he had messed up. His Talent did not explicitly tell him what was wrong but it was hard to miss his mistakes when he could understand the whole process so well. If only he had applied a little more force there or used a different part of the rock when sanding down that part of the stick.

  Blake had never been one for meditation but for the first time in his life, he found it easy to fall into focused reflection on his actions. His Talent did not understand his goal only he did so he had to go moment by moment to analyze his actions. He could tell exactly how his actions had brought about the result they had so all he had to do to correct his mistakes was go back and reiterate on his attempt.

  For now, though, Blake needed a break. It had only been an hour but his Talent had him focusing intently the entire time not to mention his arms being sore from the repetitive motion. He lay on the grass of the glade looking up at the sky. It was a picturesque blue with fluffy clouds floating about. There was something odd about the sun though.

  It took a moment for Blake to pinpoint what was so strange to him. He was looking at it. He was looking straight at the sun but there was no pain or any of the usual discomfort from doing so. It was bright but not painfully so. The sun looked more like a near perfect painting of a sun rather than the real thing.

  Thinking about it Blake realized that it was indeed fake. As a tier 0 realm, there was no way there was enough space to fit a real star. Everything beyond the clouds must have been an illusion. Maybe even the clouds, he didn’t have any way of knowing how high up the realm extended, realms were not consistent with these sorts of things.

  After only five minutes of rest, Blake got up again. He hadn’t realized how dependent he had been on technology for constant stimulus before getting stuck in this forest. Five minutes shouldn’t be much time but it felt like an eternity when all he had was cloud watching to keep himself entertained. Besides, he wanted to make another shiv and see for himself how much his Talent could do.

  Blake began his new shiv the exact same way as the last one. He got a forearm-length stick and began to rub it against rough stone. He adjusted the exact positioning and force he used in the process based on the insight he had gained from his last attempt but other than that did everything the same. The only input his Talent had to the process was his focus. Instead of just focusing on his end goal the Talent also had him see the connection between his previous craft and his new one. Considering they were both shivs made the same way that was easy.

  Once he was done Blake was surprised to find more information enter his mind. It was much less than the previous two times, more like an update, but he hadn’t thought anything would happen as his instincts had told him that only the first of a kind would do anything. As he analyzed the new information he could see what happened.

  Only the changes he had made on their impact on the end result were part of this new knowledge. It seemed that as long as he kept improving and improvising he could get new insight. Anything he had done the same was completely skipped over which was more in line with his expectations.

  As he had improved the end result, it being slightly more even and sharp, in comparison to his previous attempt there was also a slight update to his knowledge on how to use the shiv. Blake hadn’t paid it much attention as it was not immediately helpful but when he made the last shiv he had learned to use it.

  The knowledge could be boiled down to ‘stab enemy with sharp end’ but the small amount of muscle memory with it could come in handy. With this second shiv that skill improved. The amount was in line with his improvements to his craft which he believed was important to take note of.

  So far what he had learned about the use of beds and shivs was basic but if the quality of his craft influenced how skilled he could become then what would he be able to do when he had access to actual tools and materials for crafting? Could he become a master of the sword after making one himself?

  Blake smiled widely at that. Sure his initial goal of fighting monsters for quick advancement was off the table but at least he wouldn’t be defenseless. Who would expect some random crafter to secretly be a weapons master? That was assuming he decided to keep it a secret. He might be able to get a sponsorship from a big corporation, or maybe a guild, if he revealed the details of his Talent. Something to consider once he was out of this forest.

  Focusing on his new shiv Blake tried to identify any differences between it and his first attempt beyond his improved crafting skills. He neither saw nor felt a thing. Deciding to test them in action he ran them through a series of tests.

  Testing a shiv meant stabbing random stuff. First, it was the dirt, then dirt with grass. Eventually, after various densities of dirt, he moved on to trying to stab a tree and then seeing how well it kept an edge when stabbing a boulder. His second attempt might have been slightly more resilient but any difference it made was slight. It could very well be his own expectations influencing his perception.

  The strength of the effect was unfortunate but he had come to appreciate the skill component of his Talent more than the supernatural part. If he imagined his Talent as an information Talent then its worth skyrocketed in his mind. Information Talents, sometimes called seer Talents, were rare and almost always powerful. Many of humanity’s advancements following the introduction of the spirit realm were due to seer Talents pulling key information out of nowhere exactly when needed. Blake’s Talent technically did that with his crafting and skill in using his crafted tools and items.

  Blake felt he now had a good grasp on the basics of his Talent. It was time for him to try and push the limits a little to see where those limits lay.

  * * *

  A monster prowled its forest. It circled its great domain. Again and again, it went around just as it had done the day before and the day before that. For as long as it had known it had circled its domain, protecting it from threats. What were those threats? It did not know. It had never seen another creature but from the moment of its creation, it knew that its purpose was to eliminate threats.

  It prowled the underbrush. Maybe the threats were hiding? No, just like the previous times it had checked there was nothing new. No threats. Tasty roots though.

  Despite the repetitive nature of its task, it felt that something was different that day. It didn’t know how it knew but it knew. It was almost time. It was almost time to put into practice the power it had been born with. It was time to eliminate a threat.