Book 2  : Bog Standard Illusionist

Part 1

Brin twisted the blowpipe in the furnace, letting more of the molten glass stick onto the end. The glass had a strange texture when it was so hot, moldable like thick clay, but sticky like taffy.

“That’s probably enough,” said Ademir the [Crafter] from behind him.

Brin drew out the blowpipe and immediately started turning it, trying to get the glass to move into a uniform cylinder, but it stayed sort of lopsided. Ademir made this all look so easy.

He moved it to the maver, a fancy word for a special plate of mild steel, that he used to roll the glass into the approximate shape he wanted.

“Cool it down,” said Ademir. He didn’t mean the glass, he meant the pipe, so Brin dutifully brought it over to a specially made bath that could cool the pipe without touching the glass on the end. Brin’s [Heat Resistance] meant that the hot pipe wouldn’t really hurt his hands, but Ademir didn’t want the heat to warp his tools.

That done, he brought it back to the maver to roll it again. He wanted a cylinder shape; they were making bottles today. When he was satisfied with the shape, or at least satisfied that this was as good as he was going to get it, he put his mouth to the tube and started to blow. It puffed out like a ball, so it was back to the maver, then back to blowing, again and again until a glass tube took shape.

The next step involved rolling the glass while pressing down with a wooden spoon to give the bottle a nice neck.

All finished, the bottle looked… fine. The glass was too thick and the neck was too angular. Better than he’d expected, but worse than he’d hoped. Nothing like the uniform and polished bottles that Ademir could put out, but it would definitely hold water. And while Ademir’s bottles were very nicely shaped, the glass itself was clouded. For high quality glass, the town still had to order out of town, and that wasn’t something anyone would be able to do for a while on account of the massive undead army hiding in the forest.

It was hard sometimes to stay inside to make glass, knowing what he knew about the danger they faced. Sometimes he wished he was still a [Scarred One], just so he knew he wouldn’t be helpless if the army invaded. He knew that was dumb. If that army came, one more fighter wouldn’t make a difference. He’d given that power up for a reason, but it still gnawed at him sometimes.

“Does it ever bother you that you can’t fight?” asked Brin.

“Well sure. One sec” said Ademir, while finishing up some kind of tin gear he was fiddling with.

It had probably been a rude question, but Ademir wasn’t the type to take offense. He was a calm, easy-going sort of guy. And Brin was really curious. While no Common Class was very good at fighting, especially at the lower levels, [Crafters] couldn’t fight. Brin wasn't certain of the exact details, but that was the trade-off for why [Crafter] could be so effective despite how broad it was. It was crazy to him how comfortable Ademir was, being a pacifist in a world where everything wanted to kill you.

Honestly, the most offensive thing about Ademir was the fact that he wore his sandy blonde hair in a long ponytail in the back, even though his hairline was drastically receding in the front. Really tacky, but somehow he pulled it off.

Ademir set down his tools. “Does it bother me? A little, sure. Sometimes I worry, anybody would. But if everyone took combat Classes then life would be a mess. There are people around me who can defend the town. I let them do their job, and focus on what I can do.”

“What if something happens, though, where someone tries to hurt you?”

“I would run away. But Brin, I’ve been a [Crafter] my whole life since System Day, and that’s never happened. Sure, I’d like to be able to stand up for myself just in case, but how much am I willing to sacrifice for that? The gods are kind. They’ll give you anything you want. Just not everything you want. You just need to figure out what you want most.” Ademir shrugged. “I like making stuff.”

With Hogg, Brin would probably have something snarky to say to that, but it wouldn’t be the same with Ademir. The man had an earnest way about him that let him deliver tacky lines like that and just like his hairline, somehow pull it off.

“Thanks,” Brin said after an awkward pause.

The bottle was as done as it was going to be. He put on some large leather mittens–even with [Heat Resistance] he couldn’t touch molten glass with his bare hands. He cut the bottle off of the blowpipe and put it in a kiln, where it would cool slowly over the next day or so.

It was honestly very convenient that Ademir already had all this set up. He had a wide, spacious workshop, and half of it was set up for glassworks. The furnace that he’d used to make the bottle was one of two. The other was much larger and more elaborate; it could make five-by-five-foot glass sheets, which would then be trimmed for windows.

Even the windows would be foggy, though. They’d let in light but not let you see through them. Brin didn’t have a lot of long-term crafting goals; his [Glasser] Class was temporary, but one thing he’d really like to do was help Ademir make crystal clear glass someday.

Alert! [Shape Glass] leveled up! 5 -> 6

“Nice! I leveled up [Shape Glass]!” said Brin. “Not that I can tell what it does. When can I start moving glass with my mana?”

“At this level, [Shape Glass] mostly helps you use regular tools better. It’s not until much, much higher levels that you’ll be able to do things like what Oleg can do with wood, for example. I know it feels like you’re not making progress, but you’re already leaps and bounds better than where we started three days ago. Try not to compare yourself to people who’ve spent decades building themselves.”

“You’re right. Thanks,” said Brin.

“Why don’t you try one more, and then we can call it a day?” said Ademir.

Brin opened his mouth to protest. They’d only been working for four hours! But he shut it again. Four hours was a normal work shift for normal people around here. It was customary to switch tasks if you were going to work more than one shift. Besides, he had no right to monopolize all of Ademir’s time.

He dutifully spun his next bottle, only this time when he started to blow it into shape, he felt something. A small feeling of resistance against his magic. If he hadn’t used so much magic to hold his body together back when he’d been the [Scarred One], he probably wouldn’t recognize the feeling. This was his magic feeling something it could interact with. He pushed, and the bottle started to expand.

“Don't–” started Ademir.

Before he knew it, Brin’s mana quickly zeroed out, leaving him gasping and weak, but the glass just kept expanding. A ball puffed out on the side of the glass, turning black. More bubbles erupted, each of them rough and black, like enormous festering tumors. The air turned sulfurous, and then one of the bubbles popped, sending black slag to fall to the floor.

Ademir got a pan underneath it just in time to save the wooden floor, but the glass on Brin’s pipe was thoroughly ruined. A waste.

Ademir sighed.

“Sorry!” Brin said sheepishly.

“It’s fine. Everyone does this their first time. You’ve learned your lesson, right? [Shape Glass] takes time! Just keep working and it’ll happen naturally. Trust me.”

“Sorry. But what happened?”

“You shaped glass. That’s what your Skill says, right? Only, you don’t have years of experience working with glass. Shaping Skills don’t give you anything for free. It’ll work based on your knowledge of glass. You don’t know it inside and out, how it moves, how it flows, what good glass looks like and what could make it go bad. Really the only thing you can do with glass now is inject chaos into it.”

Brin looked at the black pile of slag on Ademir’s tools. This could still be useful in a pinch, maybe. As a distraction or something.

“I’ll clean it up,” said Brin.

“You will,” Ademir agreed.

Apparently the System believed that you learned more from failure than from success, because he got a few notifications.

Congratulations! Through training you have increased the following attribute:

Magic +1