The Wanderer's Rebirth: Other Paths

The next morning found Myra actually asleep, so he quietly preformed his morning rituals and slipped out of the room. [Clear Mind] was truly going above and beyond his initial hopes for it. Otherwise, he didn’t know what he would have done these past days. Well, he greatly suspected what might have happened, and he was glad that he hadn’t compromised his morals because of a pesky biological imperative.

But thanks to his dogged use of [Clear Mind], he’d finally been able to get a handle on [Psychic Reformation] and was eager to see exactly what he could do with it.

But first, he concentrated on purposely making noise as he walked down the hallway, then as he approached the kitchen, then entered it. He noticed Linette’s ear twitch slightly as he entered, and hoped for dear life that that meant she’d heard him.

“Good morning, Linette,” he said, smiling a bit as she calmly turned to face him.

“Good morning, Joram,” she said, giving him a warm smile. “Glad to see you without first having a fright,” she said, teasing him a bit.

“Glad to not have caused you a heart attack,” he said with a rueful grin. “Say, do you suppose I can try helping today?”

Linette eyed him for a moment before shrugging and agreeing, instructing him to wash up before joining her.

So, he did.

As they worked, he focussed on copying her technique, and by the time they’d set their dough aside to rise, Linette was practically singing his praises. Which was all the more embarrassing when Myra came in and Linette started telling stories of how Myra had tried over the years to help her with the baking.

“Some people just have different talents,” Myra sniffed, not quite looking at them.

“So I’ve said,” Linette agreed with a good natured laugh, showing just how close the two of them were.

He enjoyed the moment, lamenting a bit the lack of an older mentor in his youth. But then realized that he was once again “young” and thus still had a chance to form at least something similar to that kind of relationship as he got to know the people of Kirkwall.

Then Linette surprised them both.

“Well, since we’re done much sooner than I normally am, let’s whip up a batch of tea biscuits for the new young Miss,” she said with a twinkle in her eyes.

Both he and Myra agreed, knowing just how much the tea biscuit tyrant loved her tea biscuits.

So it was that Joram got to learn a new recipe. It was much simpler than bread to make, though there were a few more ingredients. That’s when he found that they used honey as their main sweetener, which made sense given how low-key sweets were here. Because if they had access to refined sugar, he was sure that other more extreme sweets would have been available.

As he was helping stir the surprisingly thick dough, he tried to remember how people had made their sweets before the advent of refined sugar. Which basically boiled down to honey, for the most part. Then he got to thinking if he could produce cacao trees with what he had in his pantry. He would have access to a greenhouse, so perhaps he could grow them… and maybe even some more plants that liked that sort of environment….

Once more enthusiastic to get building again, he made plans for another greenhouse, though this one would be for tropical plants and thus needed different materials for its creation.

After they’d finished up with the baking, they had a slightly awkward breakfast with the rest of Myra’s family. He didn’t know why Kal looked so bagged, but the man was practically a zombie at the table, while Celys and Nalun… ah. The afterglow.

It clicked, then. And now he had more sympathy for Kal.

After that brief moment of embarrassing clarity, he quickly finished up and took off. Myra and Asami joined him shortly after, laden with their daily lunch and followed by their usual entourage. Well, he’d also been followed by the purple vixen, Harumi, and a few others. Which was honestly a relief, because it meant that most of the foxes weren’t exclusively interested in him.

Then he got to work. He cleared two new patches of land in preparation for the new greenhouses he planned to build, removing the larger stones and replacing them with more soil from his ample stockpile.

Trees were then grown, harvested, and turned into more lumber. Then his attention turned to a redwood off to the side, close to where he planned to build the greenhouses. He was now comfortable with trying [Modify Matter, Greater], so he prepared accordingly.

This time, instead of using a strap to climb the tree, he created a 9th level astral construct that could fly. He altered its back into the form of a saddle with handlebars and stirrups, not keen on the idea of accidentally falling off mid-flight.

Asami and Myra seemed to be growing desensitized to anything he happened to do that was outside of their common sense, so they merely stared at the construct instead of gaping at it.

This particular construct was designed and built with a dragonfly in mind. He added [Improved Flight], then added it five more times for good measure, bringing its fly speed to almost 40km/h, and its maneuverability to “perfect”. Which was needed, as he’d have to keep focussed on a section of the tree to properly use [Modify Matter, Greater] to its full potential.

“You’re going to get on that thing?” Myra asked as he put his foot in the stirrup.

“Yes?”

“Are you sure its safe…?”

“Mostly?” he answered honestly. Truth be told, he was a bit nervous. It was his first time flying on anything other than an airplane, and he’d always been a bit… nervous, with heights. Not terrified of them, but he did have a healthy respect for PPE when it came to being close to a ledge.

Not looking terribly convinced, Myra nevertheless stayed quiet as she watched him get on and get settled. Asami, though, looked incredibly excited, as though she were itching to be able to get a ride on the astral construct too.

Shaking his head, he mentally instructed the flight model to take off and get them close to the top of the target tree. Wind rushed through his hair as his stomach tried to fall back to the ground as they rose almost straight up, reminding him of those super-fast elevators back home. It took mere seconds arrive, leaving him with a few more seconds to plan.

Given that his range was about forty metres, he knew that he’d need to handle this tree differently than the teak trees he’d been harvesting. So, he first targeted a section of the trunk as far away as he could from where he was, then manifested [Modify Matter] to strip the branches from that section.

Once those branches fell, the repeated the process until he’d debranched the whole tree. Then came the fun part where he would section the tree like he’d done with the previous ones.

To say that it was loud would have been an understatement. To say that he’d created several localized earthquakes when those sections of tree fell to the earth would have been accurate, for the mass of each section was immense.

It took another hour to process everything. When he finished, he then went over to his house and inspected it for any damages that the tremors might have caused. Which proved to be prescient, as he found several cracks in the foundation that needed fixing, which then took another hour to complete.

By the time he finished that, he saw that Asami had finally built up the courage to mount the flight model and was trying to spur it into action.

Shaking his head, he instructed it to take off and do a slow, and low, circuit around the clearing. He then got back to work, finishing the third floor by the time lunch time came around.

He noted how much Asami seemed to like the flight model, so he designated it as another [Astral Ally], bringing his total up to eight and freeing up the seventeen power points it had reserved to stick around. After that, he got to work on the roof.

It went faster than he anticipated, though the stone shingles he decided to go with took much longer than the framing did. He had to make sure that each one was shaped just right so that it would fit and overlap properly with the ones around it so that water wouldn’t be able to leak through any gaps. He placed them with the help of his new PFV, or Personal Flight Vehicle, and [Telekinesis].

The PFV to get him into position and [Telekinesis] for obvious reasons. But once he started laying the shingles, the work went quickly. Though, given the large area he needed to cover, it still took another two and a half hours or so to complete.

With the roof on, it was now pretty dark inside the skeletal house. He still needed to figure out insulation, then what he’d use to cover everything up. Normally, he’d just use some drywall. But given the number of sheets that he’d need, he was woefully understocked. He also needed to figure out what to use for a vapour barrier on the outer walls.

He was reasonably sure that he could make some poly, but given that it was temporary, that wasn’t the solution he needed. He was still a long way off from being able to use [True Creation], which would greatly simplify things for him, even with the monetary restrictions on it. You could make a lot of things while keeping under that bottom threshold after all.

Which meant that he’d need to use [Modify Matter] to make what he needed. Which meant that he needed to get [Delve] up and running as soon as he could manage. Because, with [Delve], he would be able to get the patterns needed from what he had left of the construction materials from his apartment. The drywall, poly, screws, and all that stuff. Heck, he wouldn’t even need putty to join the pieces of dry wall together seamlessly, or to cover the screws.

Smiling, he decided to turn his efforts to building a wall around his house… which would take a while. Since he had nowhere near enough stone sitting around, he chose to start by making a wooden fence, for he had plenty of materials for that.

Except nails.

Frowning, he thought about how to get around that. In the “old days”, people had made most things before the advent of nails using wedges, or cleverly formed ends that locked tightly together. Nodding to himself, he decided to go that route.

It took a lot of experimenting with various designs, cuts, and angles, but he eventually found a method that he liked. The main posts would have two channels carved out of them, one opposite to the other. Then, in those channels, he would slide the 4”x8” beams into place. He’d then reinforce the insides of the fence with another post on each side of the anchoring post.

Sure, it wouldn’t be terribly hard for someone to breach, but it was something. And with the anchoring posts being roughly three quarters of a metre around, it was still pretty sturdy. But then he ran out of time, leaving almost seventy-five percent of the perimeter unprotected.

Then it was time to head back and go through his usual evening routine, which now included Myra sleeping in the room with them and getting her own silk pajamas each time. He’d tried to alter the tops from being a woman’s tank top to more of a button-up shirt design, but had been soundly vetoed on the matter.

That night they’d even roped him into speaking with them for a time before he began studying. It wasn’t… as unpleasant as he’d anticipated. He’d already known that they were both intelligent women, but it was further showcased as they conversed.

From how Myra thought out and planned for her furry wards to how she approached most things in life, he was impressed with how much effort she put into it all. And how much care went into her considerations. Even Asami surprised him. He’d begun to think that the woman only had tea biscuits on her mind, from dawn until dusk. However, she hadn’t been called the great matriarch for nothing.

He found it pleasant to listen to their discussions, from planning to figuring out the best way to help someone or one of the foxes. He even piped in from time to time with a suggestion or a question.

He was almost loath to get back to studying, but not quite. [Psychic Reformation] was calling to him now that he could use it. He also wanted to explore the augmentation options, for he felt that there was something there that he’d… missed, if that made sense.

So, he began his studying, attempting to suss out what he felt he’d missed.

Then it came to him. The augmentation option that allowed him to crystallize an ability required Dust. Or Dust Crystals, in the condensed form. Dust, the… crystallization of raw… creation. If he was to describe it using an analogy, he’d probably go with one centred on a Cultivation setting. Xianxia, if you will. In those stories cultivators eventually run across the various Laws of nature, or reality, eventually “understanding” them to the point where they can make use of them.

Dust, he would say, would be the physical manifestation of raw Law: the Law of Creation. With it, a person could easily enchant an item. Not only that, but the time saved in its creation was astronomical. Something that would normally take months to create could be made in less than an hour with sufficient Dust to use.

Even rare reagents could be replaced by using Dust. Enchanted item creation thus went from arduous to easy. That said, a person still needed to know how to enchant something to make use of the miraculous benefits of Dust.

And now that he understood what was needed to use that augmentation option, he felt a… ripple run through him, setting his very cells atingle as it passed. When the feeling passed, he felt as though he’d had an epiphany as knowledge and understanding flooded his mind.

In that state, he concentrated on what had been bestowed upon him, focussing on the process. He felt… alive in a way that he hadn’t before. Energized. Vitalized. He could go on, but didn’t in favour of just enjoying the feeling.

When he finally opened his eyes, he found that pre-dawn light was already coming through the window. Which meant that he’d probably been meditating for a good ten hours or so. More than a little astonished at how time had just flown by, he went to get up when he found a dozen crystals laying on his chest, just above Asami’s head.

One was a simple crystal with what looked like it had been carved into the shape of a spider’s body, sans legs, and about the size of his palm from head to butt. Weird, but still nice-looking. The other eleven crystals were all shaped the same, each one having seven sides to it and as clear as could be, though with a very faint blue hue to them. Each one was just a bit larger than the Grade B cores he’d gotten from the goblins.

Curious, he used [Analyze] on them, getting an even more curious description of them.

Dust Crystal

This crystal is formed from pure Creation and crystallized into physical form with psionic power.

Dust Crystals can be used to enchant an item with a permanent enchantment, or to fully realize a created or summoned object or creature. Requires varying quantities of Dust Crystals to use in this way.

*System Warning:

Misuse of Dust can lead to System sanctions.

Please use wisely.

That the System had issued a warning regarding its use was significant in its implications. That he could… do what the System claimed he could with Dust was beyond what he knew about the stuff. The first part he’d known and had even used while roleplaying with his buddies back on Earth.

The second part, however, sent chills down his spine. That he could bring life to something he created was… scary. He then wondered what would happen if a [Summoner] got their hands on Dust.

Shuddering he quickly stored away the pile of crystals, but paused when the spider-like crystal remained on his chest.

‘Good morning, master,’ came the voice of what sounded like a weird cross between a stodgy butler and an enthusiastic professor.

‘Hello?’ he replied mentally, directing it at the voice in his head.

‘Requesting permission to engage locomotion when needed,’ he heard the voice again, an inkling forming as to its source.

‘Granted,’ he sent, then watched as the spider-shaped crystal suddenly sprouted eight legs and a double pair of wings, similar to that of a dragonfly.

‘Thank you, master. I look forward assisting you in your future endeavours,’ his psicrystal sent, then hopped off the bed and waited by the door.

Huh. I was wondering when my psicrystal would show up, he thought as he resumed his morning routine which found him in the kitchen a few minutes later, having made sure to make plenty of noise while on his way.

Once there, he had his psicrystal deactivate its… limbs, and stuffed it into his pocket.

Then, with a smile on his face as he contemplated the future, he helped Linette with the morning baking, enjoying the feeling of being able give back, at least a little bit.