It had been a day since Blake had first made a shiv. He had spent the time testing his Talent and now felt he had a decent grasp of how to use it. He knew it was only a shallow understanding but that was all he needed for the moment.
Blake had been unable to figure out what the energetic heat that infused his body when his Talent activated was and he had many more questions that had come up during his tests but they were irrelevant from a practical perspective. Once he was back in civilization he could just ask someone who knew more about this kind of thing.
His first test had been to not follow the instructions of his Talent when crafting another shiv. That meant he did not focus on the goal of his craft and what its purpose was. He found that there was no new information upon completion of the shiv. Thinking that he might not have improved his skill at making the shiv enough to get an update he tried to make something new to test it further.
He made a spear. It was similar to the shiv but with a longer handle. There was still no new information. When he repeated the craft but focused on his goal and purpose of the craft his Talent returned to full functionality.
This had proven to Blake that his focus was important to the function of his Talent. Trying to test that further, he made another spear but rather than focusing on its purpose as a spear he saw it as a strangely shaped hammer. He actually got information on its completion. The amount he gained was as if he was making a completely new item but everything was disjointed and incomplete.
He couldn’t make heads or tails of what his Talent was trying to tell him about the crafting process and the information on the use of the spear as a hammer was near useless. He had already seen how the quality of his work influenced how much he gained and this was a clear example of a failure.
By that point, Blake had been exhausted. It had only been the early afternoon but the constant physical exertion combined with the mental strain of his Talents information download had quickly worn him down. He ended up taking a four-hour nap in his leaf bed. When he woke up he felt decently well rested but he resolved himself to make a better bed before falling asleep for the night. He had the information from his first attempt to help him improve after all.
Now in a better state of mind, he returned to his experiments. Wanting to further explore if failing brought any benefits Blake attempted a different kind of craft from making rudimentary tools. He wanted to do something that was almost guaranteed to fail to see the results. He attempted an alchemy project.
Herbology, he corrected himself.
Blake had one classmate a few years ago who had been very adamant about herbology and alchemy being different. Herbology was the growing and combining of plants while alchemy was the combining of any ingredients through the application of mana. Herbology typically did not typically use mana when combining plants, though it was an option for more advanced experts.
An herbalist would use mana when growing plants as that was the key difference between them and a gardener. At least that was how Blake understood it. He had never seen the need to delve deeply into it and had only remembered as much as he had because the girl who was so into the subject was hot. No need to make a fool of himself in front of her.
So with his goal of making a simple salve with whatever plants he could find in the vicinity, he set out for a short walk. Blake knew nothing about plants so he just grabbed anything he imagined was an ‘herb’. In his mind that was any small plant with leaves. Once done he took the leaves from the various plants and placed them on a flat, smooth stone. He used a small petal to mash it up while focusing on his goal. He wanted a healing salve.
Why a healing salve? Because despite Blake’s previous thought to watch out for the sun while in the glade he had forgotten to pay attention and had sunburned his entire body including his sensitive lower regions. He really needed clothes.
Sunburns were bad enough when they were only covering arms and legs. His lower regions felt like they were falling off. He looked like a giant humanoid lobster. Hopefully, no one stumbled onto him just to think him a monster. That would an embarrassing way to end his first trip to the spirit realm.
To help turn the mix of ground-up leaves into a paste that could generously be called a salve he spat in the pile of leaves a few times. His mouth was becoming dry making it difficult but he soon had a greenish goop for his effort.
While in the spirit realm, Blake might not need food and water for basic functioning but the conservation of mass still applied so he couldn’t spit infinitely without finding water. He didn’t really sweat and his insides didn’t consume water to function which was why water was not a necessity but he would have to find water soon even if it was only for comfort.
The green goop had been enough of a craft to activate his Talent since he had been so focused on his end goal. This confirmed that if there were restrictions on what he could make they were esoteric in nature. As the information flooded in Blake’s Talent told him what he had already known. The goop was useless. It had absolutely no function beyond looking like a giant booger.
There was, however, good news. His methods and actions must have been much more aligned with his goal as the information he received was coherent. He could tell what ingredients had contributed to his goal of a healing salve and how his handling of them influenced the result. Blake was surprised to find that one of the plants did indeed have healing properties and he got some ideas on how to bring his healing salve project to fruition.
On another note, this experiment helped Blake get a better feel for his Talent. He did not have to succeed with every attempt to make something to get value out of his Talent. Sure, without a successful product, he didn’t learn anything about how to use it so a successful craft was more useful but he wouldn’t have to worry about pounding his head against the wall, lost for a way to move forward.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
After that Blake decided he was done for the night and moved to making a new and improved bed. He started by making a chisel to help with his digging efforts. It was similar to the shiv except instead of ending in a point it was shaved down to a sharpened, flat edge. Sharp was relative as it was clearly rounded but it was the best he could do with what he had.
Blake had not meant for this to be a test of his Talent but he had learned something important from the resulting information after completing the chisel. The information on how to use whatever he made might be useful when it came to weapons or utility items such as beds but he now knew that was not its strength.
No, it came to truly shine when applied to a crafting tool. The information not only gave him insight on how to use the chisel in crafting better items but also gave him ideas on new items he could make.
One of Blake’s biggest concerns with having a crafting Talent was his skill. Crafting Talents were much more dependent on how well you made items as you needed to be able to sell your crafts in order to purchase the raw materials to make more things.
If he was not good at making things then he would be unable to afford to keep working stalling his progress through the tiers. That was one of the benefits of combat Talents. Even if you were crap, you could always fight the weakest of monsters relying only on your Talent, which was free, and then sell the monster corpses.
Now Blake did not need to worry about subpar crafting results. His Talent would make sure that he was skilled in the tools of his trade so he could make at least basic items to a satisfactory level. With his new chisel in hand, he got to work.
When he started digging the shallow pit for his bed, Blake did not use his chisel. He didn’t want it to break on the simple stuff. It was only after he had carved out the rough shape with random stones lying about that he brought the chisel out. He used it to smooth out the edges of the pit and pry out any rocks sticking up.
Once done he began gathering leaves for the bed. He was more selective this time with his selection of leaves. His ingrained knowledge of the leaf bed-making process gave him a good idea of what types of leaves he wanted. He avoided anything with sharp edges and focused on leaves with a consistent round shape. As he plucked them from the trees he placed them directly into his newly dug pit. He didn’t want to unnecessarily ruin them by throwing them into a pile.
With each leaf, Blake carefully placed it in an interlocking pattern along the edges of the pit and only then began to stack them. Leaf placement wasn’t something he had thought about at all on his first attempt but the information he had gained showed him the effect that the random placement he had previously had on the results. The Talent did not tell him what the perfect placement pattern was but he tried to deduce it from the information he had gained.
This was a potential positive to making mistakes on my crafts, Blake thought. If he had made the leaves uniform the first time he would not have gathered nearly as much information from the attempt. It was only the random placement that had allowed so many different patterns to emerge for him to analyze. There were so many patterns, in fact, that he was unable to properly process them all. He would have to practice with his Talent to help better internalize the flood of information it provided him.
When the bed was finished Blake was surprised at how much new information he had gained in regard to how to sleep. There wasn’t much in terms of the crafting process itself as he had mostly been refining what he had already done but the difference in the quality of this bed must have been a much more significant jump than he had expected. He hadn’t gained nearly as much information on the use of a shiv on his second attempt.
It was a great night’s sleep.
Now he was out in the forest in search of water. Blake wanted to make a second attempt at his healing salve to help with his sunburns but his mouth was dry so he needed another source of moisture. He also wanted to drink something so his mouth wasn’t dry. It was uncomfortable.
Blake had decided that now that he better understood how his Talent worked he needed to focus his efforts rather than completing whatever thought entered his head. He knew himself well enough to know that would still happen to some extent but at least trying to focus on something might let him discover something new about his Talent. His goal? Comfort. The sunburn and thirst were the most immediate and obvious sources of discomfort. Once he was done with those he would think of something else.
‘Maybe some form of entertainment?’ Blake thought.
He was enjoying his crafting more than he had expected but he kept finding himself reaching for a phone he did not have. He wanted to read or watch something. He was used to being able to scroll through chat rooms and forums. Having any information he wanted at the tip of his fingertips. Now he couldn’t even look up the circumference of Earth if he wanted to.
Crafting was also too draining to do constantly. He had pushed through yesterday only taking a break for his nap when his body would not go on but that was not sustainable. He needed something to do when he took a break from crafting. Something mindless.
As he walked Blake thought over what he could make or do to pass the time between crafts. He hadn’t even really realized it but somewhere along the way his mindset had shifted from trying to get to civilization as soon as possible to setting up for the long run. A whisper at the back of his mind encouraged this. He didn’t need the trappings of civilization. At least not one built by others.
It took a couple of hours before he found a stream. Looking back and forth across the running water Blake was confused. The land was completely flat from what he could see but the water was moving at a decent pace. He took a moment to sate his thirst. Not having a cup, a goal for later, he dunked his head in to take a sip. It only took a couple of mouthfuls to be fully satiated. He only needed enough to resume saliva production.
Once he had finished his drink Blake began to follow the water upstream. So far he had seen no variance in the terrain beyond his little glade. Everything else was flat ground with grass and trees. No matter how far he moved upstream there was still no change. After another half hour of trying to find the source of the current Blake shrugged his shoulders and gave up. He chalked the whole thing up to weird spirit realm crap. If there could be a fake sky why not an originless current?
As he walked back towards his glade Blake thought over the next step in making a healing salve. He needed tools. The information he had gained on his first attempt showed how his poor handling of the plants had destroyed any potential value they might have had. Only one had any real reaction and it was one he had failed to smash at all. Really it was just a normal leaf wrapped in green gunk.
So he needed tools. A pestle to process the leaves and maybe a bowl to help contain the salve? Blake needed to contain the water so he decided that yes a bowl would be useful. Maybe even two, one for the salve and one just for water so he didn’t have to keep walking back and forth from his glad to the stream. Now that he knew where it was it was only a ten-minute walk away but he was lazy.
Before turning from the stream towards his glade he bent down for another sip of water. That was a mistake. Before he knew what was happening a sharp pain pierced Blake’s leg as he was attacked from behind.
Whats your opinion on line breaks
