Chương 11: Elemental things definitely happen on hill

Tufted with scraggly grass and wind-battered shrubs, the hill rose like a bump on the landscape's forehead. Fabrisse had named it Reflection Knoll years ago, back when he was ten and decided all significant hills needed names. The name never caught on with anyone else, mostly because the townsfolk of Itakonra Hollow didn't think a hill with three trees and one ancient mailbox deserved the word 'knoll' in it.

From up here, the shrine's lanterns looked no bigger than fireflies, just bright enough to contour the valley with traces of something sacred, or at least municipally funded. Fabrisse picked his way up the slope with his breath misting in the air and his pockets clinking with every other step. Behind him, Dubbie trudged in silence, her cloak pulled tight around her shoulders. When they finally reached the crest, he paced around in an oval-shaped circle and declared, "Perfect.

Elemental things definitely happen on hills." She sighed, taking a seat on a smooth-ish patch of earth as she rubbed her eyes.

"Alright then, great wizard of the knoll. What now?" [Quest Completed: Writ of Elemental Echo – Earth] Reward: +100 EXP"I don't know…" He scratched the back of his head.

"I'll have to wait for the next instruction." Dubbie rolled her eyes. The next prompt came. [New Quest: Path Calibration — Celestial Hoarding] Objective: Maintain 5 items of the same element in Primary Inventory Status: Incomplete (0 / 5) Reward: +100 EXP Celestial Hoarding (Rank I) Unlocked — Elemental Accretion Effect: For each item of the same element stored in your Inventory, gain 3% speed, casting duration, power, range & efficiency of that same element. Oh, that's easy.

He just reached into his satchel and pulled out a dull lump of Stupenstone the size of a fist, then transferred it to one of his robe pockets. Dubbie looked up from where she'd been absently scraping dirt with a twig.

"What are you doing?" Then he did it again, this time to a different pocket. And again. And again. By the fourth transfer, Dubbie had stopped scraping the dirt. By the fifth, she was staring. [Objective Complete: 5 / 5] [Effect Unlocked: Elemental Accretion (Rank I)] Element Register: Stone The pressure under his boots felt cleaner and the texture of the soil was probably more legible. But did it actually do anything? He crouched and took out a Stupenstone from his pocket. Stonesway wasn't elegant for him yet.

In theory, with a simple mnemonic, he could lift up to three stones. In practice, it was like trying to balance a plate on a broom handle while the broom handle actively rattled every time you touched it. He'd be lucky if he could hold a stone in the air for five seconds.

"Interesting. How does this work…" He opened his robe and began emptying his pockets to remove the supposed effect of Celestial Hoarding. Elemental Accretion: 0/5 (0% Boost) Dubbie said, "Don't talk to yourself without explaining to me…"

"Look," he said.

"Okay. Baseline." Then he chanted the mnemonic:"Name. Weight. Will." The stone shuddered, rose an inch, then two, wobbling and never quite finding its balance. His breathing went shallow as he fought to hold the alignment steady. One… two… three… At four seconds, the stone dipped. At five, it dropped back into the dirt.

"What happened?" She stared at him.

"Five," he murmured.

"Still five." He transferred the Stupenstones back into this pocket. Elemental Accretion: 5/5 (15% Boost) He tried again. The stone lifted. The wobble was smaller this time, and the stone rose slightly higher. The pull felt firmer, like the ground had decided to meet him halfway. One… two… three… four… five… The stone was still there. It only dropped at the sixth second. Fabrisse stared at the spot where it landed.

"Oh." Behind him, Dubbie had already given up. She walked over to the nearest tree, leaned back against it, and slid down until she was sitting in the dirt.

"Fabri, I' m exhausted. I' ve got shrine duty tomorrow, and I still don' t know why you wanted me here if you' re just going to stand around talking to yourself." Neither did he. Eidralith wanted a partner.

"Now you' re just going to not respond to me." She rubbed at her eyes.

"You' re always like this. You drag me somewhere because it' s apparently urgent, then disappear into your own head and leave me standing there." He was about to answer, but then he got another apparition. [Tutorial Quest Received: Incremental Understanding] Objective: Gain 5% progression toward learning a spell or skill not yet mastered Status: Incomplete (0 / 5%) Reward: +100 EXP Fabrisse squinted.

"…That's not a task," he muttered.

"That's homework." Another line appeared beneath it, mildly offended. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. [New Passive Skill — Progress Dividend (Basic, Rank I)] Type: Passive (Aether) Effect: Whenever you gain 1% progress in one skill, you may copy that progress to another skill of the same Tier (up to 7% daily). Repeatable daily. Reset: At the First Bell of each day.

[SYSTEM NOTE: Focus on a skill whose theory you understand but which you have not yet mastered to observe its progression.] [ADDITIONAL NOTE: Progress rate is influenced by Affinity and RES. High Affinity with low RES results in diminished returns. High RES with low Affinity produces inefficient gains. Balanced parameters recommended.]"Oh," he said quietly.

"It's compounding."

"Compounding what?" Dubbie asked.

"Progress."

"Skill progress."

"Which skills?"

"I don' t know yet." She rubbed her nose, sighing.

"Right. I have no idea what any of that means. I'll be over there if you need to converse with an actual person." Fabrisse had expected Skills to resemble spells. You learned Stonesway, and now you could lift rocks. Learn a fire spell, and eventually you'd throw fireballs. This was just a learning aid, rewarding him for teaching himself. The Eidralith claimed he had received Progress Dividend, but unlike Celestial Hoarding, nothing had actually... happened.

If Progress Dividend did anything at all, the only way to verify it was to make progress in a skill and see whether the promised duplication occurred. He had a spell in mind: Stonebind. Cakil had explained it exactly once, on a bad afternoon, with a cracked practice slab and the tone he used when he was trying not to repeat himself. Stonebind didn't change what the stone was made of. The stone stayed the same size and the same shape.

Yet under the bind its matter compacted, growing denser and heavier in practice, so it struck harder and held together more cleanly for as long as he could maintain the spell. So he thought about the spell. [Stonebind (Basic, Rank 0): Progress to Rank I — 58%] Fabrisse exhaled and reached into his satchel, drawing out another Stupenstone. He set it on the ground and mirrored the motion he'd seen Cakil do as best he could while murmuring the mnemonic under his breath.

"Grain. Weight. Still." Nothing happened. The stone didn't feel different beneath his fingers. It was still just a stone—cool, dull, unimpressed. He tried again. This time he slowed down, deliberately. Less expectation. Less wanting. He set his fingers in place, found the internal pressure lines the way Cakil had shown him, and let his awareness rest there without pushing.

"Grain. Weight. Still." If anything had happened, it had probably been statistically unmeasurable. Eidralith ticked anyway. [Progress: 59%] Dubbie snuggled against the tree.

"What are you casting? Did it work?"

"I mean," he said, holding up the stone, "technically, yes? The glyph called it progress."

"Did it do anything?"

"No. The stone just sat there." She rubbed her eyes.

"Well. Maybe it's polite." He kept going anyway. Again and again, the same motion. Fingers placed, wrist angled, breath measured. Grain. Weight. Still. He adjusted nothing because he didn't know what to adjust, even though Cakil had been very clear that Stonebind wasn't a spell you bullied into working. You demonstrated understanding, or the stone ignored you. [Progress: 60%] [Progress: 61%] He didn't know how long had passed. By the time he gained 5%, his wrist was aching and his fingers were shaking.

[Tutorial Quest Completed: Incremental Understanding] Reward: +100 EXP [New Passive Skill Acquired — Progress Dividend (Basic, Rank I)] Progress Dividend worked. The question was why the Eidralith had bothered giving this to him at all. He had expected some immediate surge of power given to him, as most artifacts did. Instead, Eidralith seemed far more intricate than that. The thing appeared almost... intelligent, dispensing rewards based on its own interpretation of progress rather than some fixed measurement.

Whatever EXP was, it had to be important later on.

"Yes," Fabrisse breathed, fist clenching in a triumphant pump.

"Dubs! I've got it. I—" Dubbie snored. He turned around. She was slumped against the tree with her chin to her chest and her mouth slightly open. Better let her sleep. Dubbie was spectacularly grumpy when woken up. Waking her now would result in consequences. He turned back toward the stones instead, carefully setting the Stupenstone back into his satchel. Maybe he wouldn't need her right now. Eidralith wanted a partner, sure, but it hadn't specified immediate conversational availability.

That counted for something. [Tutorial Quest Received:...] Fabrisse swatted it away before he finished reading.

"No." The apparition vanished. I' ve only just unlocked Progress Dividend. I don't even know how useful it is yet. You don't get to hand me another assignment before I've understood the last one. [SYSTEM NOTE: Tutorial pacing is statistically optimized.] Well then, I am a statistical anomaly. [Reminder deferred for 10 minutes.] Fabrisse nodded in satisfaction. Much better. He pulled up the entry for Progress Dividend again, mulling over it.

So I can train one Stone skill, and I can Rank up another skill in the process. With this information, he scrolled through his skill lists, trying to find a skill that was on the verge of ranking up. He got one. Stonesway (Rank I) Progress to Rank II: 93% Good. Now he only needed something else that was easier to practice. So he searched. Gravelkin (Rank I) One particular stone from your collection can lightly shake on command. Why is this even a skill? I don' t even remember learning that. Then again...

One of the Stupenstones in his collection had always seemed oddly cooperative. He reached into his satchel and found the familiar lump of stone.

"Shake," he ordered. It gave a minute tremor.

"… Only this one?" He glanced at the others in his satchel and tried to shake another one. It didn' t shake. Why only this one responded to commands? Had repeated handling altered it somehow? Was the response unique to Stupenstone? Did prolonged emotional exposure induce low-level cognition in otherwise inert minerals? If stones could develop rudimentary sentience through sustained thaumaturgic interaction... His mind leapt three years ahead.

He could already imagine the title of his next paper: On the Emergence of Proto-Cognition in Common Geological Materials. The Unified Synod would lose its collective mind — Hold on. He stared at the pebble. He had to try casting a spell first. Not now. One hypothesis at a time. He selected Stonesway as the recipient for Progress Dividend and commanded his stone again, "Shake." The stone shook. Gravelkin — Progress to Rank II: 0% → 1% Progress Dividend Activated Stonesway — Progress to Rank II: 93% → 94% Splendid.

Training Stonesway directly was exhausting. Six seconds of sustained levitation left his temples pounding and his fingers trembling. This was considerably easier. So he kept shaking the stone until he gained a full 7% progress. Stonesway — Upgraded to Rank II Levitation stability, duration, and orbital radius increased by 10%. His eyes lit up as he snatched three Stupenstones from his satchel and flicked them into the air.

"Name. Weight. Will." The pebbles rose. They felt steadier, and instead of levitating for six seconds, they levitated for nearly seven. He could also control them to circle in a noticeably wider arc without threatening to tumble out of alignment. A grin spread across his face.

"It actually works." The reminder still hadn't returned. Fabrisse smiled. He had been very efficient with his time. He reopened the deferred notification himself.

"Proceed." The next quest showed up.