I woke from a dead sleep, the gentle sway and swing of the wagon trying to lull me back to rest. Blinking at the ceiling, the little dust sparkling in the shaft of sunlight peeking through the covered windows, I tried to figure out what woke me. It wasn’t the movement. We had been following the same schedule for more than a week now, and I had become entirely inured to it. I had made a token effort to wake earlier in the morning to shift my schedule to match the troop’s movements. Still, that effort quickly fell to the wayside since there was nothing for me to do, and Snowy was busy during those hours. It merely made better sense to while away the midday hours with a nap, the retained warmth of the wagon comforting as the last of winter faded. By the end of the trek, we would be well into spring, and the midday would be less comfortable.

Still, something had woken me. The march was still ongoing, so it wasn’t a loud noise or disturbance, or a battle. I didn’t feel the subtle tingle on the air that I associated with my one encounter with the undead. My apprentice was still gently snoring on the other side of the wagon, so it wasn’t her either. We had developed habits that made riding together more comfortable. It had taken only me forgetting to set the latch once while using the privy pot before those routines became set in stone.

Wiping my fingers through the grit in my eyes, I sighed. At the same time, I fumbled around inside my soul, trying to feel for a change without dipping into [Meditation]. In the last few days, I had made an effort to avoid [Meditation]. My absentminded and introspective behavior had increased to an alarming degree lately. It moved beyond distraction and toward ignoring the outer world even while not in [Meditation]. Whole periods from the early part of our travel seemed dipped in fog. The only parts that stood out to me were the fights and my focus on [Woodworking]. Snowy had even snapped at me, and I had been so distracted I hadn’t even noticed. That was a clear warning sign, and once I had explained my behavior to Snowy, she agreed that I should avoid the Skill use.

Which was difficult.

I didn’t crave the silence and introspection of [Meditation] how some men dreamed of ale, but it wasn’t that far off either. Worse, I found myself slipping into [Meditation] briefly during combat training with Snowy. These brief dips didn’t seem to be as harmful to my attention to the world, but I knew too little about this danger to consider it safe from only this little exposure. Skills could have hidden risks. Skills changed a person as much as they changed the Skill. Powerful Skills, even more so.

Silencing a sigh, I sat up and then poked at the feeling of my soul then nodded when I could still feel the gentle ripples bouncing through it. Shuffling through my soul links - as I thought of the connection between my soul and my students - I checked all the Skill lists I had access to. Flicking through them was a much faster process now that I understood it. When I reached Snowy’s Skills, I stopped, then smiled. She had used her Skill Point, and she chose a socially aligned Skill. Likely at the urging of her etiquette teacher.

Socially Adroit - Tier 1: 2

Society is based on the give and take of individuals.

Passive Effect:

Lesser: Improved ability to express your emotions and mind.

Lesser: Improved ability to understand another’s emotion and mind.

Seeing the limited listing and the lack of Active Effect, I had to cringe. The Skill only had the lesser components of the Passive Effect. That was going to be difficult for her to improve. Still, it was one of the broadest social Skills, and at least she had the passive effects working for her. She might even see some use out of it during combat, both offensively and defensively. Altogether, it was probably the best choice she could have made. I knew that it was also well regarded among the nobles. With basic acting lessons, she could even use it similar to the way I used [Acting]. However, it would take practice to maintain the correct mental state. [Acting] helped someone present specific emotions and body language. It was lying with feeling and the body instead of with words. [Socially Adroit] made it easier to express emotions or intent, even if the other person wasn’t proficient at reading them. Adding the additional step of pretending a feeling, it could replicate [Acting].

Gently, I brushed against the blob of liquid mana in my soul and thought about why I had been putting off my own selection. I knew one of the reasons. I didn’t want to waste my Skill Point, and I knew that I would regret not selecting something else whatever I chose. I didn’t regret the sudden gain in [Meditation], even if it was hampering my further growth. I made a choice to work on [Meditation], and I earned it. The Skill Point didn’t feel like my own work. It felt like a sudden prize, a windfall that came from no effort of my own, so I was far more hesitant. It also didn’t help that I had a smattering of training from nearly every Skill Trainer that I had access to while growing up. Even when I didn’t earn a Skill - and in the earliest days of childhood, it wasn’t possible to acquire Skills - I still learned something from the training. Apparently, that training left an impression somehow since my Skill Point was almost eager to let me grow in the direction of those long-ago lessons. Herbs, planning, accounting, drawing, painting, gardening, and on and on. I had dabbled in many options as a child. My parents had indulged me in many things and forced me to try many more. In some cases, they had simply exchanged training with other Skill Trainers. My father, in particular, was well regarded in this way.

Mentally running my finger over every option, I kept returning to the one I detested and wanted nothing to do with. For that reason, it kept jumping to the top of my list.

[Dancing].

My mother spent months working with me as a child, trying to teach me to dance. I was not a fan. It felt like a frivolous and worthless Skill. Even being able to dance without the Skill seemed silly. The only reason I had spent any time on it at all was my father insisting that it was useful training for a warrior. This was in my childhood when I still fancied myself as a warrior-in-training, a conquering general only waiting for his soldiers. Eventually, I had outgrown the war stories and the epics of heroic battle, putting my sights on leading a mercenary troop or training them like my father. As I grew, my parents spent less time watching over me, so I ignored the training I disliked, like dancing.

But now I was a noble and would be expected to do as the other nobles did. In some ways, this was a good thing. Being able to sit for a cup of tea, bow, smile, and trade comments as the nobles did, were all useful things to know. Eventually, the Baron would have less work for me and would have me training only a select few to become his Elites. It wasn’t a matter of cost or wanting to maintain his power. It was merely that most wouldn’t be willing to train. Only Private Baker and Private Potter had shown a willingness to really train. Even then, only Baker had continued that drive after I stopped pushing. That was why Private Potter was still in the forest with the rest of the soldiers, and Private Baker was with us being trained. Noble children were rarely given a choice on training and often grew up proud and vicious to those they considered their inferiors.

Just because I had a noble title didn’t mean I would be allowed to sit with the aristocracy without friction. Being able to blend in with the rest of the nobles would only help me in my future work. There had been inquiries from nobles for my work, but I was focused on Snowy and the Baron’s men. That would change in the future, and each Skill I had that would let me fit in with the nobles would be useful. [Acting] and memorizing a book on etiquette would be enough to see me through most situations. That wouldn’t help me with the dances and all the little intimate gatherings, which were the sign of wealth and power. Dancing was as much about displaying your own prowess as it was a signal that you fit within the group.

Thinking about it for only another second, I closed my eyes in my bunk. The wagon slowly swaying beneath me as I dipped into my soul. Poking the liquid mana, I shoved the intent of [Dancing] into the fluid and watched as the point of contact crystallized and the Skill formed. Shards and points grew, the structure pulling from the liquid and solidifying.

Then it stopped.

The growth was pathetic, more a shard than a crystal, but to my surprise, the change continued. While the crystal froze into [Dancing], the liquid mana bubbled and expanded, covering my soul in a deluge of the magic gas that I lacked. Even the outer structure of my soul, the walls that surrounded me, expanded. The expansion was slight, but it pulled in even more of the magical gas from the outside. The crystal for the [Dancing] Skill might have been minuscule, but the leftovers were everywhere and only waiting to be consumed by another Skill. The sense of depletion, the feeling that I could no longer progress no matter my efforts, was now gone. Now I knew, knew absolutely, that I could continue growing. That my soul was ready for training and that I could improve my Skills.

Looking back and forth within my soul, I could see my Skills, some small, some large, and a fog of magic swirling throughout. Each of the crystals seemed to yearn and strain for change. They were beyond ready to increase. It felt like even the slightest change or improvement would spark another shift and growth. Tentatively, I reached out and brushed against one of my most potent crystals: [Alchemy]. Sensations of smells and movement, timing and heat, cold and filtering, flashed through me.

I was ignoring my pledge to avoid [Meditation] and reveling in discovering my inner world and its potential. Somewhere in here was a way to use the magic of my soul. It was everywhere, and I could almost taste it. Brushing against [Alchemy] again, I tried to direct the growth, change the Skill, and push the gas that swirled around it into the crystal protrusions. I fumbled my grip, slipping my mental fingers along the jagged shape in an oddly smooth and painless sensation. Despite my efforts, the gas continued to swirl, and the crystal remained the same.

Reaching out around the crystal, encompassing it in my mind, I held the crystal and the gas together in a bubble of will. The non-physical movement felt like grabbing a jagged shard of metal with my mind, swirling with smoke and biting cold. The mana resisted being shoved into the chips of solid mana. I hoped that pressing in this way would let me force the magic into the Skill’s crystal, but I had no luck. There had been a momentary slip, a feeling of the magic shifting, but the movement quickly halted.

Opening my eyes, I looked around, disoriented. The wagon was still moving, the sway unchanged. The light cutting through the window was at roughly the same angle, and no more than a few seconds had passed. My loss of time while experimenting with [Meditation] had worried me, but I was apparently fine. Licking my lips, I wondered if I should set this experiment aside for the moment. Still, I couldn’t resist the call of discovery and quickly slipped back into my soul.

I gathered up as much gaseous mana as possible in my mental fingers. Swirling through the fog was suddenly a feeling of thickness and biting cold. I cupped my will around my [Alchemy] Skill again. I was intent on causing it to grow. If it worked, then I could enhance my Skills whenever my mana recovered. I could avoid the pain and the strain of training and grow intentionally. Layering my mental hands around the bubble of magic, I slammed every ounce of will into the bubble. I staggered as the magic compressed far more readily than before. Unfurling my mental digits, I stared in horror at the pure liquid mana that bubbled in my soul. The swirling fluid was easily triple the size of my original Skill point.

There was no [Alchemy] crystal.