What they spent the rest of the day doing could be called productive in the loosest sense, and although they could’ve been training more rigorously, after a certain point he’d begun to feel somewhat tired of the rote practice. If they were outside, the environment wouldn’t have felt as stifling compared to inside. It was fine, though.
Brennan was having fun.
Yes, he would be beating himself up for it later when he had to put in extra hours for his next upgrade, but he’d never claimed to have perfect discipline. Maintaining that single-minded drive to improve became more difficult in proportion to the decreasing speed at which the rewards for his efforts trickled in. And with somebody actively trying to make his life less stimulating for the past three days, today provided an opportunity to introduce his go-to activities back into his routine.
Mainly just inventive ways of training to keep things interesting.
“Here, catch.” He threw a white blanket over Agnes’ head, creating a little eyeless ghost.
The phantom turned in his direction, and began haunting him across the lands. Or rather, Agnes chased him around the house. He laughed as she bumped into the doorframe, only for her to surprise him by recovering in a second and running after him despite the obstacles in her way.
Currently, they were testing her proficiency at navigating blind at higher speeds while he was preparing himself to face creatures whose primary orientational sense wasn’t sight. Many such beasts lurked in zones, and he would have to learn how to best deal with them at some point.
Yeah, he could think of more optimal ways to go about it. This was simply hilarious, and they wouldn’t be doing it for long… was what he said an hour ago. He might’ve gotten a bit carried away.
To his friend’s credit, the game had netted her a level in the end. Traversing terrain you couldn’t see was totally possible with her skill set, they learned. By the time their game concluded, he had a more accurate picture of what it would take to fulfill that role. For a scout, he imagined having that ability was desirable.
Agnes didn’t strike him as a scout, but what did he know? That could change. He wasn’t trying to control her build, just nudge her along in interesting ways and gain more insight while doing so.
Skill advancement aside, Doris seemed amused by their antics. Throughout the day, she had grown warmer to their visitor and the stern mother facade she kept up to cow him had fallen away. If he didn’t know better, he would almost think she forgot to be angry with him at some point because she enjoyed seeing them run around so much.
Only, he did know better. She still kept an eye on him. And he had no plans of slipping up while she was in a good mood. Him misbehaving? Perish the thought. He was the ideal son. No better continuation to the family tree than Brennan Kerrick.
At dinner, he’d been about to get ready to say goodbye to his guest, but Doris firmly nixed that idea, stating “What would have to possess me to send this girl home with an empty stomach? Sit, now.”
And so the situation reminded Brennan that it was actually common practice to serve dinner to people who were visiting your house for the day, even children. It marked another difference between this life and his previous one, as he could remember various families back on Earth who would’ve had no reservations about telling their guests to make themselves scarce when it came time to eat.
On second thought, it could be more of a village thing. When you had a small community like this, maintaining relationships was a lot more important. In the kingdom’s larger cities, he assumed there’d be significantly less emphasis on breaking bread with your neighbor.
George and Junia didn’t bat an eye at the extra plate on their table, or the girl eating from it. Clearly, they weren’t surprised by the turn of events. He figured they already knew Agnes would be coming before he did.
My own family conspiring against me. Nostalgic.
He shook the dark thoughts away with a wry smile. His sister did have Mellie over for dinner once, now that he thought about it. Some time had passed since then, and he wondered if the relationship between the two older girls had atrophied or if they just considered themselves too mature, being a year away from their Class and all. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
Dinner itself was a merry affair, his parents joking with each other about having a more well-mannered daughter at the table and Junia sputtering in indignation after she’d been bragging to Brennan about being allowed to go outside and how amazing the weather was.
At the end of the evening, Agnes was practically beaming. Brennan could agree with the sentiment. It had been a good day. The one thing that could make it better was if he could get to the artifact already. He tried to finagle a way out of the house, citing something about making sure she got home safe. It didn’t work. Dad ruffled his hair before opening the door to take his friend back to her place.
Oh well. Tomorrow was another day he could use to progress his skills. If he kept this up, he would be more equipped to ancient mystery stones. Some of his preparations might require two people, which was why Agnes’ presence would speed things along. The more often she came over, the better.
As he came to find out, his mother vehemently agreed that the occasion bore repeating. She already included the girl in a bunch of her plans for tomorrow. He hid his smirk upon seeing her act so excited for what was supposed to be his reward, lest she rain down more punishment. Couldn’t let his guard down, after all.
But true to his word, he served his sentence without further incident.
*******
The next four weeks consisted of a series of tests. They needed to know exactly what the enchanted stone did.
Brennan, being the advanced, ultra-competent and highly funded researcher that he was, commenced his experimentation with a core fundament of scientific discovery throughout all of human history.
He bashed it with a rock.
The results were within expectations, he'd already gotten a sense of how durable this thing was while tossing it around the night he first found it. None of the impacts made the smallest crack in the item or in his tool of choice. He didn’t possess a particularly high Strength attribute, resulting in a lackluster first try.
Yet they'd kept at it, Agnes doing her due diligence as well. When those attempts failed, they switched to a somewhat more sophisticated mode of testing: exposing the stone to different environments. They put it in treetops, underwater, threw it in the air, left it buried for a longer time than before. Each trial they put it through, it passed with flying colors. The markings never lit up in spite of what he did to them.
Likewise, Sense Magic picked up nothing besides the same inert energy it had contained from the start. There truly didn't seem to be any changes taking place. What were they doing wrong?
He started to wonder if there wasn't some access key he was missing, and he had no hope of ever accessing its real function to begin with. That couldn't be the case, though if it were then he would still be better off making sure of that by trying harder to unlock the hidden facets of his latest—and only—item of value.
Therefore, he forged on. If it was resistant to outside influence, brute force and depending on the elements wouldn’t do the trick, leaving him with the choice of studying it in order to unearth its intended mechanisms. Easier said than done, to say the least.
He realized the biggest roadblock was the aforementioned lack of responses it gave under whatever change in circumstances they subjected it to. No opportunities to extrapolate data from a set of reference points, just one singular snapshot of its magical profile, however they called that in this world.
The second round of testing began in the latter half of the month, characterized by a lot more theory on his end in order to make sure he at least thought he was gaining an understanding. He was banking on Lucent Comprehension to help him out on this front, leading to a moderate level increase alongside two of his other skills.
[Lucent Comprehension (Uncommon) Lv. Lv. 3] -> Lv. 5
[Focus (Common) Lv. 98] -> Lv. 99
[Writing (Common) Lv. 97] -> Lv. 99
Both his highest Common skills were close to the precipice after the latest advancements, brushing against the edge of the next rarity. For Writing, he needed to do something more elaborate than he had done so far if he wanted to break through. For Focus, he had an idea, one he would be enacting after testing was over. You are reading on novelping dot com, the official source.
There would be a dedicated training regimen in practice then, the moment he was done with the stone. He didn’t know what bothered him about it the most. The craftsmanship, the knowledge that it was foreign, or the way it silently mocked him with every failure. This was already a consolation prize for the real treasure he'd lacked the power to seize for himself, and he couldn't even figure it out.
So yeah, maybe it was getting kind of personal with how long it was taking, but he would be damned if he stopped and rendered all his prior work on it useless.
Sunk cost fallacy for the win.
It could've been speculation about its potential applications driving him forward, the magic waiting to be released in arm’s reach. Anything to get him out of this limbo where nothing about his abilities was actual spellcraft. Urgency rose, his tests growing obsessive. Attempts at deciphering the runes, fruitless. Substituting common utility tools and substituting them for the stone also refused to work.
He swam through the rivers of uncertainty, encountering currents of self-doubt with every stroke. Although Brennan wanted to say his willpower had no limits, that wasn't even remotely true. Facing this wall, his conviction wavered.
The only thing stopping him from going to the watch post and asking why a box of smuggled goods would include an item with the exact appearance of the one he was hiding? Fear that they would track it and take it from him.
On the twenty-seventh day of conducting their extensive field research, something happened. He had finally decided to throw his hands up in defeat and swiped a knife out of his father's toolkit. The rationale behind it had been that he would just go back to his initial plan of trying to break the rectangular piece of engraved stone in order to trigger the magic he felt inside, this time aided by a cutting implement to apply more pressure on a smaller surface area.
Ironically, the surprise came in the early morning, from a slip of his blade he'd made in the process of finding the right angle to cut from. The runes had lit up and sucked in the green motes of mana in the air. Then they began to dim as they released the stored mana onto the glinting metal.
[Sense Magic (Uncommon) Lv. 66] -> Lv. 67
His mouth hung open.
To confirm, he swept the knife through the grass—it cut with sharpness and range that shouldn’t have been possible. Moreover, the mana coating the edge dissipated with the cut. No input needed from him whatsoever.
Laughter bubbled out of his throat, loud and hearty. Sitting there, alone in the field, Brennan grinned wider than ever.
It's a whetstone. A magical whetstone.
Skill unlocked!
[Sharpening (Common) Lv. 1]
Would you like to equip this skill?
He decided to pass on the proposed skill. To the archive it went. He would take advantage of this another way.
Because he didn't quite have magic yet, but he owned something that did. And that was going to make all the difference.