Chương 65: Chapter 66: (Un)Acceptable Losses

The simple sentence put a sixth weight on a five-slot frame. I looked at the piles on the table because looking at Halden would have given him too much credit.

"When?"

"Before Eisenfeld takes you seriously. Ore Processing without Mining is like knowing how to cook a fish you cannot catch."

"I can find ore with Veinfinder."

"You can sense seams and pressure. That is not the same as cutting, bracing, extracting, following safe lines, recognising bad roof, keeping a tunnel alive, or knowing when the ground is lying about how much weight it can forgive." Talia's tone went lighter, which meant the blade had found the joint.

"You need room." I did not answer. The obvious skill to drop was Appraisal. That was what Halden wanted me to understand without saying first. Wood Charmcraft was too close to Orven, ironwood, heartwood, old forest logic, and half the impossible threads already tangled around my survival.

Beastcraft had kept me from ruining value, helped me understand altered animals, and was now tied to Crimson Elf experimentation in ways that made dropping it feel like throwing away sight before walking into the Derwold blindfolded. Veinfinder was the reason Halden looked at me like a future tool for stone, bridge, tunnel, and river. Ore Processing had just awakened and was the door Eisenfeld might recognise.

That left Appraisal, the skill that priced the world, named gear, read danger, caught lies in objects, and had just shown me exactly what the Crimson Setting Fragment had done to my body. Appraisal, Copper (mid). Newly sharpened by the relic. Newly useful. Newly dangerous to lose. I tried to imagine walking into Strathford without it. No clean reading on guild papers. No fast check on weapon grade. No easy distinction between Copper gear and polished fraud.

No system answer when someone placed a relic, contract, tool, or lie in front of me. The thought struck deeper than it should have because Appraisal was not only about value anymore. It had become a way to make the world admit shape before it charged me for touching it.

"What if I drop Wood Charmcraft?" I asked. Talia's expression did not change, but her eyes moved to my chest. Halden's answer was slower than usual.

"You can." That was not permission. It was deflection.

"Wood Charmcraft has not advanced recently."

"Because you have been using it in dead places, broken places, or places too small for what it has become," Halden said.

"That is not the same as useless."

"It blocks the slot the same way."

"So does a foundation stone if you are trying to build a door through it." I looked toward the road, where winter-bare vines ran along the slope and the Derwold pressed dark behind Araluen's upper terraces. Wood had killed Orven, saved me, opened power, resisted axes, become heartwood, ironwood, charm, ward, bridge problem, and whatever the fragment now held against my chest. Dropping Wood Charmcraft felt less like setting down a tool and more like telling an old language I no longer had room to hear it.

"Beastcraft?" I asked. Talia answered this time.

"You just followed Crimson animal work across two roads, survived altered deer, and cut apart Shardbacks because you understood their bodies better than they did. Drop it if you want, but do not ask me to explain obvious mistakes twice."

"Veinfinder?" Halden laughed once, not kindly.

"If you drop Veinfinder, I will tie you to the cart until sense returns. You are going north to stone, ore, tunnels, foundations, and people who respect the ground more than most kings. Veinfinder is the first useful thing you brought me that was not attached to an axe." You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Ore Processing is Iron (early). It is weakest."

"It is also the thing you just made room for without having room for what follows."

"And Appraisal tells me all of this."

"Yes," Halden said.

"Which is why dropping it will hurt. Useful losses do." The table blurred at the edges, not from tears, but from the fragment's clarity pulling too many lines through the same thought. Appraisal read the collar fragment again without being asked. Copper alloy. Refined. Contaminated. Dangerous. It read Halden's hand screen. Iron (early). Simple. Worn. It read Talia's locket hiding under her shirt. Silver work. Refined. Family mark obscured.

Then the reading snapped away when she covered it with one gloved finger and looked at me as if she had felt the skill touch something it had no right to touch.

"Careful," she said quietly. Appraisal made everything available to the part of me that wanted certainty, and the Crimson Setting Fragment made that hunger sharper. I could tell myself I needed the skill to avoid being cheated, to understand relics, to read gear, to walk into cities with one less blind side. All of that was true. It was also true that the skill reached where manners, fear, and survival told me not to.

It wanted to name Talia's locket, Halden's tools, Araluen's ward stones, the fragment on my chest, every object with a past and every person trying to keep one hidden. The loss would make me poorer in knowledge. Keeping it might make me less human in the way I took knowledge from the world. I put my hand over the heartwood bird and the Crimson Setting Fragment beneath my shirt. The relic was warm, waiting, sharpening every objection into something persuasive. Talia watched me with no joke left in her face.

"Once it is gone, you do not get to check what people hand you."

"I know."

"You will have to ask."

"I know."

"You hate asking."

"I know." The three words were not enough for what they carried. Asking meant trusting the answer or revealing that I did not. Asking meant giving someone else the power to name value before I could test it. Asking meant walking into markets, guild halls, workshops, and noble houses without the small private shield Appraisal gave me. Asking meant being poor again in a new way, even with Copper in my bones and Iron gear on my body. I looked at the sorted piles on the table. Ore Processing sat in me like a new ache.

Veinfinder waited under my feet. Wood Charmcraft rested somewhere deeper, quiet but not gone. Beastcraft held the memory of altered deer, Shardback seams, and bodies changed by people who treated life as material. Appraisal stood bright among them, sharp, useful, intrusive, and doomed. I let it go. I had to stop reaching for the small comfort of naming the table, the fragments, the tools, Talia's pin, Halden's screen, the quality of the knife at my belt, the exact grade of the broken ward grit.

I had to let the world become objects again before it became answers. The skill resisted only because I did. It did not claw. It did not plead. It simply sat there being useful until I could no longer pretend usefulness was the same as necessity. ABILITY DROPPED Appraisal has been released from your active Craft/Gather slots. Previously held grade: Copper (mid). You lose active Appraisal readings. Residual familiarity may remain, but it will not provide system-recognised results. Silence followed. Not true silence.

Araluen still worked behind us. The road still waited. Halden still breathed like a man evaluating. Talia still watched me with the restrained irritation of someone who had wanted me to make the correct choice and hated seeing what it cost. But the private answering voice of Appraisal was gone. I looked at the red-black collar fragment on the table, and it was only dark metal with damaged edges. I looked at Halden's hand screen, and it was only worn mesh in a wooden frame.

I looked at Talia's pin, and it was only a silver leaf holding her collar closed, which was both less than before and safer than before. My chest felt colder despite the relic. Halden gathered the separated samples into three small packets and handed them to me.

"Keep these. Not because you know what they are worth, but because you know they are not the same." I placed them in Merris's pack carefully, feeling the storage accept the packets into one space as if the world at least still believed in categories I could not read. Talia had already turned toward the road. She did not say well done. She did not say sorry. She did not say that losing a skill at Copper (mid) because the future required room was a different kind of injury from cuts, burns, and bruises.

She only waited until I lifted my pack, then started walking north-east without looking back at the upper house. Halden fell in beside me.

"You now have one empty craft slot."

"For Mining."

"For Mining," he agreed.

"And for respect in places where stone remembers every fool who thought strength and rank were enough." I looked once back at Araluen. The town stood wealthy, wounded, and unfinished beneath the trees, with Talia's old life hidden in its upper terraces and Crimson Elf damage cut into its ward stones. Then the road bent, the lower arch passed behind us, and the place became smoke between vines.

The Crimson Setting Fragment rested against my chest, giving me more mind than I trusted, less body than I needed, and less will than felt safe. Appraisal was gone, and the world did not become simpler. It became an unacceptable loss. A necessary unacceptable loss that I could no longer count.