Despite wanting to celebrate a little that day at having gained what I felt like was a powerful Affix, I didn’t want to waste too much time. Then again, I had earned a good chunk of money after my last job. A compromise, then—I promised my fellow cultists we’d have a special dinner as soon as the Ration House was open. It was coming along nicely so that wouldn’t be taking too long.

  With that out of the way, I could return to training. I did want to keep pushing my Attributes, even though I didn’t really have to. Not as much. Enshrined Growth didn’t just work on shared Aspects, but on shared Attributes as well. I had received plenty of proof that morning when I had gained those new ranks.

  So instead, I tried to tackle Sacrifice for a bit.

  “Are you sure a rock is going to work, Ross?” Sreketh asked.

  Technically, it wasn’t a rock so much as a broken temple brick I had deformed while trying to practice Gravity’s new Affix, Granular Control. So it was now less a brick and more a shapeless chunk of stone.

  “Well, that’s what we’re here to find out,” I said.

  Picking up said rock, I tried channelling Sacrifices into it. I wasn’t surprised when nothing at all happened.

  The rock was most likely mine. I didn’t think ownership was the issue. Rather, a plain old rock just didn’t fit the kind of things I had Sacrificed so far. Or, to be more precise, I didn’t want the rock to give me the kind of reward I knew it would, if I went along the lines of what I normally kept getting.

  The Sacrifice rewards were often a product of the tribute’s emotional significance, sometimes its function, but never a product of its consistency or material. Basically, if I Sacrificed the rock without a thought, I’d receive some kind of reward related to how it had fulfilled its role as a piece for the temple’s construction.

  In fact—

  “Let’s test it out,” I said.

  I just let Sacrifice run its course for a second. The white threads burned through the misshapen stone and soon, it was gone in a flash.

  [ Sacrifice

  You have Sacrificed 1 [Broken] Construction Material. Windfall bonus activated.

  Reward: Half an instance of a lost piece of yourself will return to you. ]

  “What did you get?” Sreketh asked.

  “Uh… good question.” I told her what the reward notification had said.

  “A missing piece…” Sreketh mused. “Like healing yourself?”

  “That was my first thought too,” I said. “But I’m wondering if there’s more to it than that.”

  “More to it how?”

  “Well, if I consider things I’m wearing or holding or using as pieces of me, then if they went missing…”

  Sreketh’s eyes widened. “That would be pretty busted!”

  I laughed a little at her phrasing. “Yeah, very useful.”

  My hypothesis was correct. After I tore off a chunk of my robes and had Sreketh hold on to it tightly, I got another un-deformed brick and Sacrificed it.

  [ Sacrifice

  You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Construction Material. Windfall bonus activated.

  Reward: 1 instance of a lost piece of yourself will return to you. ]

  [ Rank Up!

  Your Sacrifice Aspect has risen by one Rank.

  Sacrifice: Silver VIII ]

  This time, I got a [Minor] descriptor for the brick instead of [Broken]. Made sense. More importantly, the Weave recognized that my clothes were in disrepair and rewarded me by magically fixing it back to perfect condition. The white strands of Sacrifice mana turned into literal threads on my robes.

  “Wow.” Sreketh held up the torn piece of white fabric in her hand. “It didn’t even try to pull the original fabric, it just created a new chunk!”

  That was an interesting observation.

  “Still not exactly what I wanted,” I said. “But it’s not bad.”

  “Not bad?” Sreketh shook her head in amazement. “You literally got your robes repaired for free!”

  I raised my eyebrows at her.

  “Well…” She shuffled her feet. “It’s not like that brick was useful anyway.”

  I snorted. “I can’t keep Sacrificing bricks away so that’s a moot point. Plus, my goal here wasn’t to Sacrifice a brick. Not really. I wanted to Sacrifice rocks. See what I’m saying?”

  Sreketh slowly nodded. “You won’t have bricks readily available out there. Just rocks.”

  “Well… yes, but also, bricks over here are made from rocks.”

  I tried it again, focusing Sacrifice on the brick but not allowing it to use its regular rewarding process. Regaining a piece of myself wasn’t what I wanted just then. There had to be an inherent value, a certain built-in significance to what the tribute was made of. Something related to its material, to whatever combination of chemical elements that it was created of.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  For instance, what if I Sacrificed jewellery? The value, the emotional significance of such an object, was intrinsically tied to its appearance and its materials.

  Hmm, maybe that was what I needed. Sacrifice was still failing on the brick. But maybe it was because the tribute was too generic, placing little significance on the fact that it was essentially a rock.

  Maybe I needed something that acknowledged and even embraced what it was made of.

  The consideration I kept wanting to disregard was the possibility that I needed a new Affix. My Sacrifice slots were all full now. I’d need to hit Gold with it to get more slots. Although, if that was the case, then maybe my real goal—that of finding a workaround to gaining the benefits of Emulation without its drawbacks—would be possible too.

  But it meant I’d need to come to this later. Bummer. I felt like I was making progress though, like I was on the verge of some kind of breakthrough.

  Since my stuff was done for the time being, it was my turn to help Sreketh.

  “So I was thinking about what you said.” She was fidgeting and shuffling her feet again. “About the academy and all that. I think I want to go there, Ross. I think you were right about slowing down, about taking it easy. But I still want to explore all my options. So if I can do it at Xokrist academy, then that’ll be great! Except…”

  I nodded a little grimly. She was landing on the real problem with that plan. I could see it in her face, even if she hadn’t said it out loud.

  “We’ll figure it out,” I said encouragingly. “I got a bunch of Scarthralls accepted into both the Mage and the Adventurer’s Guilds. Surely you’ve got some faith in me.”

  Sreketh smiled hesitantly. “Alright, fair. Just let me know what I have to do.”

  “I promise I will.”

  Afterwards, I practiced her Aspect with her. She was getting much better about painting things to completion fast enough to make them a viable strategy for actual combat. Although, in an actual fight, I was still pretty sure she’d be laid out flat before she could actually get one of her paintings out. Unless she had a good deal of prep time.

  “I just need to get the painting of the painter done,” Sreketh said, drawing the figure of an artist on the ground. She grinned at me toothily. “Kind of funny, isn’t it? Doubling down on the same thing I can already do.”

  “Right.” I nodded in understanding. “Get that off and then you’ve buffed yourself so you can produce all subsequent paintings a lot faster.”

  “Almost twice as fast now! Just need to rank up the Aspect a bit more.”

  It was fascinating to see the kind of things she could accomplish with her artwork already. Her Aspect of Painted Power was almost as open-ended as Sacrifice. There wasn’t a limit to what she could draw, only a limit in how much and what kind of power she gained from said piece of painting.

  Sadly, some things weren’t possible just yet. Sreketh couldn’t yet fly despite drawing a very realistic bird, nor could she manage the several thousand pounds of bite force when drawing a crocodile. Turned out she and most people in Zairgon didn’t even know what crocodiles were.

  She was making progress in both directions. The painting of a bird allowed her to remain airborne after every leap longer than what reality should have allowed.

  In the same way, she could bite off the tines of forks during meals after painting a crocodile.

  That last discovery had been pretty scary when it had happened—she had been choking and coughing horribly as one of the broken metal tines almost got stuck in her throat—but kind of funny after she had managed to spit it out and the danger was past.

  I watched and appreciated her training with her Aspect some more. There wasn’t much I could do to help. All I did was perform the Ritual of Growth with her to hasten both our ascents.

  Though, I did wonder if Revayne could maybe assist. Her Aspect of Escapism was more complex, but also not dissimilar. Maybe she’d have pointers. Sreketh didn’t seem too sure about the idea, apparently not quite eager to work with any of the guards for some reason.

  “They’re not great people,” she said simply.

  I couldn’t exactly recall any of them being endearing, but they weren’t all terrible people. “Revayne is nice, although I obviously won’t push you if you’d rather not. The real issue is whether she’d have the time…”

  Now I was remembering how little I had seen of her recently, and that she had stated she was pretty busy. I wondered with what and if it had something to do with the Blight Swarm.

  I joined the others for lunch, then went over money matters with Aqrea.

  “The cult’s coffers aren’t exactly in the best of states, are they?” I said as I looked at her numbers for our accounts.

  “It’s natural after all the things we’ve been paying for and funding.” She handed me another sheaf of pages. “If you look at some of the historical statements, you’ll see that we’re still well above what the cult’s typical amount looks like.”

  “Yes, you’re right.” I shook my head. “All this time, and I still feel a pang at seeing the numbers go down.”

  “Why, are you addicted to numbers going up, Cultist Ross?”

  I grinned. “Well… maybe?”

  The thing that made sure I didn’t feel too bad was the fact that my recent job had come with a nice payout. However, I needed to remember that my account and the cult’s account were different, with obviously different financial states. Sure, the outflow of cash often blurred together because I’d use both to pay for similar things, but the sources of inflow were entirely separate.

  With that done, I decided I would train with Granular Control some more. It was hard with how much mana it cost. Still, I felt like I made some progress. I was learning how to destructively wield it pretty well, which was easy because destruction was aimless.

  Constructively using it was a lot harder, though.

  I could take a broken brick from the temple and misshape it into something an eldritch monstrosity would approve of. Returning it back to its original shape was more difficult and needed significantly more control and concentration. I was slowly getting better at it, though. Manipulating molecular structure with Gravity was always a heady feeling.

  It made me wonder if I could dig even deeper. Right now, I was sort of messing around with molecular forces in between atoms. But atoms consisted of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Could I make Gravity dig to a subatomic level and manipulate matter that way?

  Possible or not, I didn’t try. I was aware that causing widespread subatomic chaos had a very strong potential to blow up about as bad as my mana core had when awakening.

  That said, stars underwent nuclear fusion within them. I had a feeling that, if I could continue progressing as I was doing, then I’d end up with some sort of Aspect that would have something to do with that fusion process. Something to look forward to. Also something to be wary of.

  I focused on Granular Control for now. That reversible process of destruction and construction was only possible for solids, and for liquids to some extent. Bricks? A-okay. Water? Possible, if I had the right container.

  Air? Ha, I wished.

  I did realize, though, that being able to do the construction part of Granular Control would be closer to the pinnacle of what I could achieve with it than anything else I had done so far. Air was so light, its particles so far apart and fizzing around with such speed, that the idea of destruction via Granular Control was laughable at best.

  Construction on the other hand…

  I also realized that the effect of Granular Control was definitely dependent on the energy content of what I was trying to manipulate. Heating up solids and fluids made destroying them that much easier, vice versa with cooling them down making pulling them back together more trivial. Made sense from what I knew about how molecules and their energy functioned.

  At least all the experimenting, compounded with all the constant use I put Gravity to by modifying my weight every day and during every sparring session, got me another rank in time.

  [ Rank Up!

  Your Gravity Aspect has risen by one Rank.

  Gravity: Silver VIII ]

  The last thing I wanted to train on was Threaded Reinforcement. Getting another limb topped up with the mana threads from my core would probably help push my Spirit along, which was again falling behind a little. In my mind, at least.

  But I didn’t get much time to focus on it. That night, I received a letter from Cerea. It didn’t say much. Just stated that she was finally back in town and asked if we could all meet soon, likely somewhere a bit private.

  Some exchanges later, we decided to go to Cerea’s residence in Ring Three early the next morning.

  I barely finished up tying my leg with Threaded Reinforcement that night before taking a quick power nap and heading out early the next day.

  “Oh, you’re right on time,” Ugnash said as I met him on the street near where Cerea was staying.

  I decided against telling him how I’d gotten lost about half a dozen times, which was why I had set out early enough to begin with. “Do you know what’s so urgent?”

  Ugnash shook his head. “Not really. Guess we’re going to find out soon enough.”

  True. We discovered she lived in the third-floor flat of one of the nondescript apartment blocks nearby. Khagnio, surprisingly, was already there.

  “Welcome, welcome,” Cerea said. “Don’t worry, even I’m surprised Khagnio was first.”

  The Scalekin scowled, though neither I nor Ugnash was paying him much attention. We just stared at the bandages wrapped around Cerea’s neck and upper arm plus the new scar gashing down her forehead and cheek.

  “Uh…”

  Cerea waved off whatever comment I was going to make about her condition. “Come on in, come on in! I’ve been waiting too long to show this to you blockheads.”

  Just as I entered and Ugnash followed before closing the door behind us, Cerea’s Aspect of Dimensions activated with a spark of black and white energy.

  “Get a load of this,” she said.

  Then she pulled out a gigantic pincer attached to a chopped-off green insectoid limb.