He sat down on his bed and navigated to where he left off last time, selecting [Skills].

  [Skills come in two types, Passive and Active. Passive Skills have specific effects that are always active and cannot be deactivated, costing nothing for the user to keep on, and are more often than not just for quality of life. Active Skills must be activated by expending one’s own Mana, and will drain the user's Mana whilst activated, though most Passive Skills are single use and do not have prolonged effects so this rule doesn't apply for the majority of cases. It is impossible to see whether a Skill is Passive or Active from first glance, and the user must try imbuing Mana into each one to see which are Active and which are not.]

  So that's what Mana's for? Activating certain skills, stronger ones, perhaps like... [Simple Future Sight, Level 1]? In that case Active Skills were effectively what he would know as spells in videogames, but then what was the [Spells] section about? This information meant one main thing to him, it was very possible that none of his skills had actually been doing anything this entire time and that they were all Active Skills that required Mana to activate, and there was one specific skill he needed to check for sure. He tried imbuing Mana into [Death Watcher, Level 4]-

  [Mana Points: 8/8 (-1) -> 7/8]

  [Notice: Skill activated]

  [Death Watcher, Level 4]

  [First Save Point]

  >>> [Save State #1]

  >>> [Save State #2]

  >>> [Save State #3]

  >>> [Save State #4]

  >>> [Save State #5]

  [Death Watcher] had been an Active Skill the entire time, but what exactly was it that it did? He selected the top one, [Save State #1] to see what would happen.

  [Notice: Save State #1 shall now replay]

  Replay? What did that-

  [>>> {Save State #1 Starting} <<<]

  -Kaelen Calder-

  Light leaked into the room from the sun outside, permeating through every single inch of the room. It was bright outside as always. It must be morning now. The sun never went down, not anyways. The light of day never truly ceases. It only varied in amount, creating an endless morning. Kaelen Calder was still able to remember the story of how the light was the eye of their God, Lumex, watching over their world despite how tired he was. Kaelen, not Lumex. He suspected the being didn’t exist all in all.

  He had once heard that long ago there were times of day when the light stopped, truly stopped. The stories called that period of time night, but that was ridiculous. How could there be no light at all? How would time work if the sun had no lowest point from which to start counting the hours? There was no way for any of those stories to be true. Maybe people just used to call low light no light.

  But no. That didn't make sense, not really. Why say there was no light if there was some light? Either way he had things to do today so would have to get up, no matter the time. And so, reluctantly, he gets out of bed and focuses inward. The orb of energy, Lux, at the core of his consciousness shrinks just a bit, fabric didn't use much up. The substance pools up on his skin, evaporating into a mist as it forms a basic t-shirt and pair of trousers, Fabricating them. It’d have to do.

  [Lux: 13 (-12) -> 1]

  Kaelen: Not sure I have enough for anything else today.

  He’d have to find the odd chair or bit of fabric to Blaze and stock up on his Lux. It was the seventh day of the week so the festival should still be going on, ending the day after. That’d be a solid chance to find something good to Blaze. Assuming no one notices he might even be able to get his hands on some extra meat.

  Meat was the best source of Lux that wasn’t a living being, and he really needed more Lux. At the rate he was going, he wasn’t sure that he’d have enough of the stuff to pass the whole week. He decides to check around his room and manages to find a spare coin.

  Kaelen, smiling: Seems like my luck is up!

  He plays around with it for a bit between his fingers before focusing on the metal coin. It sets alight, Blazing, turning into mist and entering his skin. His Lux went back up by some amount or other. He wasn't great with measuring Lux and so wasn’t exactly sure by how much, perhaps that was how he ended up almost broke. If Talyndra was here she’d be able to guess and probably be exactly right knowing her.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Kaelen: Shame it’s too late to properly learn. -Oh well.

  That'd have to do with morning Blazing. He was getting far too distracted at the moment. Anyone could Blaze any given object or plant, that was the easy part of all of this. It was Fabrication that was hard. You could only really Fabricate something if you were either very familiar with it or had an extremely good imagination depending on what it was you were trying to Fabricate.

  That was why it was extremely dangerous to Fabricate meat. If you didn’t know your stuff you could very easily poison yourself. The easiest way to learn to Fabricate something wasn’t to study the object for hours on end, but to Blaze extremely large amounts of it. Blazing left a small imprint on your Lux, if you Blazed something you didn’t know then for a very brief period of time you’d know how to Fabricate it. The more of an item or material you Blazed, the easier it was to Fabricate.

  Weapons though? Weapons were easy. All they had to be was sharp. That's what he was good at with this, Fabricating weapons. He was extremely good with them, too good for any of what he made to be affordable by anyone within a hundred miles.

  Kaelen: And now I’m broke.

  He would move, but again, he's broke. And he's not up to walking extremely large distances in the hopes he managed to find another town, he wasn’t desperate enough for that yet. But enough thinking to himself. He went outside and into the market. He had a lot of minor theft to do, and not a lot of time to do it. The festival would last only a few more hours and it was the only period of time when everyone was distracted enough to not notice someone Blazing in the middle of the street.

  Talyndra: Well you look grim as ever Kaelen.

  Kaelen: What do you want, Talyndra? I'm not in the mood for this.

  Tali: You know it's just Tali.

  Kaelen: And you know I'm busy during festivals.

  Tali: Stealing no doubt.

  Kaelen: You know I have to.

  Tali: You don't have to do anything. You could always just- I don't know- make a weapon that

  isn't extremely intricate?

  Kaelen: I have standards.

  Tali: Your standards are going to get you killed.

  Kaelen: And?

  Tali: And I'd hate to see you die because you won't swallow your pride and make a basic sword for once! Come on Kaelen! It's not hard!

  Kaelen: It's hard for me. I take pride in what I'm good at, I don't see why I shouldn't have standards for what I make.

  Tali: But letting them kill you?!

  Kaelen: My standards won't kill me. The starvation will.

  Tali: We both know you know what I meant.

  Kaelen: If you don't mind, I need to go and steal what I can to Blaze.

  Tali, annoyed: *sigh* Don't. It's- Here.

  Tali holds out a small iron ingot.

  Kaelen: And this is?

  Tali: You know what it is.

  Kaelen: I'm not-

  Tali: Just take it.

  Kaelen: I won't.

  Tali: You need more Lux, right? Take this. You won't have to steal.

  Kaelen: I'm not taking your charity.

  Tali: I'm not letting you steal.

  Kaelen: Let me rephrase this- I'm not taking your charity.

  Tali drops the ingot.

  Tali: Would you look at that? There's a free ingot on the floor.

  Kaelen, annoyed: Talyndra.

  Tali: -Tali. And seriously, take it.

  Kaelen, annoyed: *sigh* But only because I have better things to be doing than dealing with you.

  Tali: Sure you do.

  Kaelen picks up the ingot, focusing inward once again, the ingot turning into mist and then melting into his skin joining the rest of his Lux as he Blazed it.

  [Lux: 1 (+30) -> 31]

  Tali: Better?

  Kaelen: Not really.

  He turns and starts walking away, towards the Festival.

  Tali: You're still going to steal from them, aren't you?

  Kaelen: Yep!

  Tali: Anything I can do to stop you?

  Kaelen, far away: Nope!

  Tali: I don't see why I bother.

  Kaelen, extremely far away: Me neither!

  By the time he arrived at the Festival Kaelen was sulking, moving around the few shadows that existed at this time of day, trying to stay as obscured as possible in the light. He didn't want to be spotted stealing. He had been caught one too many times and would likely actually be arrested this time instead of just forced to re-Fabricate it, or at least something worth that much. He managed to hit his head on a board with missing posters, one of the many boards at the festival. They all had the same posters so it didn't really matter which you looked at. There were seventeen posters on the board, and so when he saw what was on the board he knew it was on them all.

  Kaelen, confused: -What in the...?

  His own face was staring back at him.

  Kaelen, confused: That's ridiculous. I'm not missing.