Brin had hoped that they’d go straight over to Neptune after they got back, but they didn’t have the potion yet and Hogg wouldn’t even entertain the idea of waking Calisto up in the middle of the night to make it.

To top things off, Brin and Marksi still smelled like corpses, so he made them bathe before they could enter the house. That meant using a bucket and rag on the back doorstep with cold water in the middle of the night.

It didn’t ruin his good mood, though. Three levels in one night! He was nearly to level fifteen, and with it, possibly [Illusionist]. Assuming he got [Summon Glass], that was the last really powerful [Glasser] Skill that he needed. He’d be able to continue to train up those Skills even after he evolved the Class; he couldn’t get new [Glasser] Skills, but really, there weren’t any he’d heard of that he really wanted.

That meant he needed to think about fulfilling the conditions for earning the Class itself. Hogg seemed to think Brin would get it no problem, but his inner-selves had given him a hint. He needed to do what someone calling themselves an illusionist on earth would do. In his mind, and his mind was all that mattered for this kind of riddle, that meant he needed to put on a magic show. He hadn’t really put any thought into how or when to do that; he’d figured it was still a long way off.

Preparing for bed, he unpacked the pockets of his leather clothes so that he could put them in the laundry. Perris’ smoke bombs were in there, as well as the hand mirror. He hadn’t gotten a chance to use the smoke bombs, and he really shouldn’t have brought the mirror at all. At least it wasn’t broken.

Turning it over in his hands, he noticed that there was no back. He assumed mirrors in this technology level would be set with polished metal, but it wasn’t. It was all one piece of shaped glass. He scraped the back with his fingernail, and discovered it wasn’t painted either. It was just glass.

A [Glasser] had probably made this, he realized. The person who made this could alter the properties of the glass itself to make it perfectly reflective. Perris had given this to him as a clue. A sign of the type of thing that a Glasser should be able to do.

If he could make glass reflective, what else could he do? Could he disguise it? Soon he’d probably be able to disguise his glass weapons as ordinary steel, in order to stop giving enemies a clue about his abilities. He needed to up his game, crafting-wise.

It also didn’t escape his notice that Perris had literally sold him smoke bombs and a hand mirror. Smoke and mirrors. Honestly, how much did that guy know?

The last thing before bed, he pumped all his Mana into his spearhead, trying to change its color. He decided to make it black. Maybe it would look like blacksteel.

By the time he was tapped out, it was a foggy gray, but at least he hadn’t made it bubble or explode. Baby steps.

The next day, he pulled Hogg down to the enchanted ring in the cellar, even before Davi got there an hour before dawn for the morning workout.

“I’m an old man! I can’t get by on four hours of sleep like you kids,” Hogg complained.

“You’re not that old,” said Brin. “And besides, your Constitution is probably to the moon. I’m the one with Common stats.”

Actually, how high were Hogg’s stats? He used [Inspect].

A man.