“Master?”

  “Yeah?” Rory called out as a head poked into the forge.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah? Why do you ask?” Rory said, frowning.

  “Because you’ve been sitting there, staring at the forge, for three days.”

  “Not true,” Rory countered. “I went home to sleep.”

  “For four hours. Total.”

  “I don’t see your point,” Rory said, crossing his arms and frowning.

  “I’m just curious what you’re up to. Normally you tell me at least something about your plans. Instead, the day after we returned from the Maw, you just plunked yourself there where you’ve been ever since.”

  Rory frowned, tapping his chin as he thought. Apostolos was correct; Rory had done precisely that, sitting in front of their forge, cross-legged and deep in thought.

  But he’d surely told Apostolos why.

  Hadn’t he?

  “You sure I never mentioned it?” Rory questioned. His memory was damn close to perfect in the short term. Yet, Rory felt a nagging sense that he’d forgotten to inform Apostolos.

  “Nope, nothing.” We got back, you went to sleep, and prestos—fast-forward three days, and here we are.”

  “Did… Did I not even mention my skill selection from A6?”

  “Nope,” Apostolos said.

  “Huh.” Rory reconsidered his memories, confirming that he’d never said anything about what had transpired. “Guess I got distracted.”

  “Missing the trees in the forest,” Apostolos said sagely.

  “Shut up,” Rory grumbled; the young man just loved to tease his master about how he’d lose track of the small things. “Here, just take a look,” Rory said, not feeling like explaining as he flicked over a display with his two newest skills.

  Apostolos silently read the skills, his eyebrows creeping up before he exhaled heavily.

  “That’s… Wow.”

  “You said it.” Rory agreed. “I’ve been trying to make sense of the best way to utilize Forge of the Cosmos. Just one small problem.”

  “That being?” Apostolos questioned.

  “This,” Rory gestured toward their forge. “It’s not tough enough. Between the innate understanding of Forge of the Cosmos and everything I’ve put together using the near-full release of my Eye skill, our current forge won’t cut it. All that would happen is I’d plant a baby star inside the forge, and boom, it would explode. Connected to our energy grid, the cascading effect might also cause our entire camp to boom.”

  “But I live here.” Apostolos protested.

  “Exactly my point.” Rory nodded in agreement. “Oh, there is another point I’ve been considering.”

  “Being?”

  “After I took my well-deserved rest, I realized there was a notification I’d been missing. Notice the grade of Forge of the Cosmos?”

  “Extreme,” Apostolos said, clearly impressed. “That makes two, right?”

  “Bingo, which was a Testament unlock, it turns out. Two or more extreme rank skills or higher. I’ve been considering the best skill to slot within my newly earned Testament. Obvious logic dictates your highest-rank skills are the best to ‘improve,’ but given you need some practice with a skill to make the official jump to their upgraded version, a high-rank skill would be unlikely to see any change for a long time.”

  “So, what have you been thinking of slotting instead?” Apostolos asked.

  “Either my Eye skill or Mind Palace.”

  “Your Eye skill would probably evolve instantly if it’s about practice,” Apostolos pointed out.

  “Exactly, but I’m not certain what ‘upgrade’ it could gain from aligning more with the concept of my vocation. Essence Spark gained a secondary passive affinity when it became Foundational Essence Spark. Aside from that, it didn’t really change. So, I’m uncertain how it might affect my other skills.”

  “Are you afraid it might somehow break your Eye skill?”

  “A little, but also not really.”

  “If that’s the case, why don’t you change your perspective? You’ve only just gotten Mind Palace, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, you don’t have any attachment to how it works. Can’t break something that you’ve never put together.”

  Rory was silent, considering the thought.

  I mean… He’s not wrong.

  Rory had considered this frame of mind, but hearing Apostolos repeat it solidified the thought in his mind.

  Yeah, I guess he’s right.

  With a shrug, Rory did exactly what Apostolos recommended, slotting the skill. Only a moment later, the skill changed.

  Mind Palace

  Rarity: Uncommon. Skill Level: Low.

  The mind is like a palace of knowledge, memories, and thoughts. For you, that becomes more literal. Through significant investment in Cognition and practice in mental diversification, you gain the ability to form a Mental Space in which time is perceived as slower, and the world around you can be freely adjusted and manipulated. Within your Mental Space, all skills and gear may be freely utilized and modeled against whatever you have perceived in the past. Mental Spaces do not contribute to direct growth. The rate of skill stress accrued is tied to Cognition and the length of time skill activation is maintained.

  -->

  Architect’s Reality

  Rarity: Rare. Skill Level: Low.

  The mind is like a palace of knowledge, memories, and thoughts. For an Architect, that becomes literal. Through significant investment in Cognition and practice in mental diversification, you gain the ability to form a Mental Space in which time is perceived as slower, and the world around you can be freely adjusted and manipulated. Within your Mental Space, all skills and gear may be freely utilized and modeled against whatever you have perceived in the past. Mental Spaces do not contribute to direct growth. The rate of skill stress accrued is tied to Cognition and the length of time skill activation is maintained. You may project a mental space into reality that is interactable and viewable only to yourself.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  “That expression,” Apostolos said, instantly noticing something was up. “Don’t tell me you got the skill to evolve instantly? I thought you needed practice?”

  “What do you think I’ve been doing the last few days,” Rory sighed. “I’ve been in and out of a Mental Space and actual reality nearly constantly trying to figure this out. Guess that was enough for the skill to instantly evolve after being enshrined within one of my testaments.”

  “Well, is the upgrade good?”

  “Yeah, seems that way,” Rory said. “The skill itself hasn’t changed much; I can just model my mental space in actual reality, so I don’t have to swap between them.”

  “Will that help?”

  “Maybe?” Rory said, uncertain. “Depends on how it interacts with my Eye skill. While I can model reality in a mental space, my skills don’t interact the same as if they were actually there.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Imagine you have a stick. When using my eye skills in the real world, I can see many ways I can use that stick for different projects or whatnot. Even if I conjure the same stick in my mental space, it will remain purely as a stick.”

  “So basically, they’re one or the other.”

  “Exactly,” Rory confirmed. “But now…”

  Using the skill, Rory felt as if thoughts were being yanked from his head before forcibly painting over the cavass of reality. Several ideas and thoughts began to overlay the forge, green colored like the 3D images you’d see in old sci-fi movies. Not finished, Rory activated Eyes of the Dokkalfar-kin, cranking the skill up to its second release as his cognition attribute was enhanced and his sight became clouded with phantasmal specters of potential.

  “Ow,” Rory held his head, the sudden pounding ringing like a gong. It felt like two pieces of giant machinery were slowly scrapped one against the other, his brain right in the middle.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Lot of stress,” Rory said, gritting his teeth. “Using my Eye skill and projecting a Mind Palace together is a lot to process.”

  Doing his best to ignore his slowly liquefying brain, Rory dutifully examined everything within his sight, trying to formulate a plan of action. The main issue he’d encountered was that a star was a lot to contain, even when shrunk to the size of a basketball. Renovations to their current forge wouldn’t be enough, and none of his current materials were even up to the task. Even if Crimson steel were strong enough, the base aspect of blood essence would slowly corrode and eat away at the containment magic that partially maintained the stability of the skill.

  How did he know that exactly? Innate knowledge that the skill itself granted. It wasn’t just understanding how to make a star but also how to contain it, which could only be achieved magically. Materials that were made utilizing essences that didn’t harmonize with the general ‘accepted’ concepts would, over time, lose their strength or eat away at the strength of the magic containing the star.

  Thus, his problems. Both magical and material.

  “The good news is this,” Rory said after contemplating. “Because the energy grid was integrated into our settlement and the forge itself was retrofitted to be wired in beforehand, I can utilize a deconstruct function. This enables the forge to collapse into a construct seed, in this case, a forge seed. All the associated material and essence that the forge accumulated will be ‘saved’ and, when fed into a new forge, can fast-track its Ascension while maintaining a significant degree of Ascension energy and physical matter.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “Magic,” Rory waved about vaguely. Much like Aelia knew things because she was a World Spirit, Rory had learned certain things he could do with the settlement simply by being its ‘leader.’

  “And the bad news?” Apostolos followed up.

  “The same problems as before. I must figure out a new forge design and materials capable of withstanding a baby star’s force. Realistically, most of our things have utilized either Bloodwood or Crimson Steel. Both of which are heavily tied to blood essence. While extremely useful and powerful, blood essence is inherently an affecting essence; it corrupts by its sheer nature. What we need is stability, a non-reactive material.

  “Well, you’ve got that new Lattice affinity. Why don’t you whip up a new type of tree for the material?”

  “Two issues. One, the concept of wood being used to contain a star is completely diametrical; that alone would probably cause the entire thing to fail. Second, I can’t poof a new tree into existence; the method I used before was very specifically possible due to my blood affinity. A big thing about blood essence is, as I mentioned prior, how it affects other things. Corruption and change. Using it to force a change in a living thing like a tree wasn’t much of a stretch. Lattice is stability; you won’t make a living thing embody that concept and change; again, it’s two diametrically opposed points.”

  “I still think your Lattice affinity could help,” Apostolos said dejectedly.

  “Oh, I completely agree,” Rory said quickly. “But just because something, in theory, feels like it should work doesn’t mean that the execution will be made anymore obvious.”

  Silence held as Rory continued examining the forge, utilizing his projected Mental Space and Eye skill to parse through different ideas and realities and model the best potential route forward. His head continued to pound and hurt, but Rory persevered; rest would be his reward once he’d had some inkling of an idea.

  Maybe I’m thinking of this all wrong.

  He so badly wanted something to work for this entire skill selection to be a success that he’d only viewed it through the lens of making the star work within the forge.

  What if the answer was to make a forge that worked around the star?

  In which case, why have I been so beholden to the regular designs of normal forges?

  As if freeing himself from the shackles of restrictive thinking, Rory felt an entire selection of new ideas become available.

  Think. How were stars contained in the past?

  While technically not the past -Earth existed in a now-extinct universe- that didn’t change the fact that humanity had finally achieved successful fusion reactors toward the end of history. They weren’t widespread, but they were fully effective.

  So, take that concept as your base and ditch the regular forge idea.

  The projected green image overlaying the forge suddenly flickered. Changing in shape completely, it now looked more akin to a Dyson swarm with orbital rings surrounding a glowing ball of plasma, all contained within magnetic fields.

  Yes! Rory mentally cheered as something about the projected image seemed to click.

  Finally, having a physical base to build from, Rory retracted some of the active skills, no longer needing to work within real space. Retreating to his mind palace, Rory was floating in a dark void with the same stellar forge in front of him.

  “We’ve got a template; now it’s time to hash out the specifics of everything else.”

  Rory wasn’t a physicist by any means—in fact, he’d nearly failed a college physics class he took for fun—but he at least understood the basic fundamentals of how stars and fusion energy worked. A containing magnetic field kept a ball of superheated plasma locked in place.

  Oversimplified? Probably, but that wasn’t important at the time.

  “So,” Rory floated around the stellar forge. “How do I go about making a containing field?”

  The easiest solution would be to extensively use Inscriptions to direct and guide pneuma and enable a strong magnetic field to contain the Forge Star. The issue was, as Rory had learned after years of utilizing inscriptions, that inscription wasn’t inherently very efficient.

  Instead, the efficiency of an inscription was contingent upon your personal knowledge of whatever it was that was being accomplished. Whether you used one or one hundred runes to summon a flame, you’d get a flame either way. The difference was that using a single rune to encompass a large and vague intent was highly inefficient, whereas using a hundred runes could accomplish detailed work, cutting out waste and excess.

  An easy way to think of it was like trying to get a boulder up a hill. The ‘simplest’ way to do that would be to toss the entire thing straight to the top, but that was far from the ‘best’ solution. That’s what a one-rune solution was like. Loading that same boulder onto a sled and dragging it up the hill would be like a one-hundred-rune solution, far more efficient and doable with far less energy.

  All of that came back to the fact that while Rory knew the basics of magnetism and fusion, he didn’t know the details. The nitty-gritty science, the fine details, would enable him to fashion a runic base of perfect efficiency.

  As if to prove the point, Rory spent hours in his mind palace formulating different inscription bases to uncover a method to project a magnetic field capable of withstanding and containing the power of even a tiny star. While he ‘succeeded,’ the sheer degree of pneuma they required would burn through their months of stockpiled pneuma in less than a week at best.

  Rory wanted to continue drafting ideas, but as he began to work on his next idea, he was suddenly back in real space, lying on the ground next to their forge.

  “Huh?” Rory mumbled.

  Then the pain hit, crashing into him like a tidal wave.

  Fuck me!

  Curling into a tight ball, Rory held his head between his hands as it felt like a band of pissed-off gangsters were kicking the ever-living shit out of him.

  “Master?” Rory vaguely heard a sound, seconds passing before it registered into understandable language. “Master, are you okay?”

  “No,” Rory croaked. “Pushed… pushed my mental skills… too hard… strain backlash.”

  Given that Apostolos also had access to skills that would place a ‘strain’ on the user, he instantly understood. Tossed over Apostolos’s shoulder, Rory couldn’t even complain as the young man hurried him to his home and tossed him onto his bed. A minute later, a small marble-like object was stuck into his mouth.

  “Blood gem,” Apostolos informed Rory.

  Rory couldn’t even nod his head in understanding, the pain only getting worse. Swallowing the marble, Rory felt a tiny energy trickle permeating his body.

  Losing himself to the pain, Rory could do nothing as he blacked out.