Foreman Tuk and I sat on some of the strewn about pieces of rock that made up the bulk of Emer’Thalis. For whatever reason, he seemed to want to talk away from the dining area.

“So? What’s up? You letting me know that it’s time for all the builders to head out?” They were here, after all, only temporarily on order from the king of Ftheran. I’d actually expected them to be gone already seeing as they’d finish building the houses we needed, but it wasn’t something I’d followed up on.

The foreman was somewhat fidgety as he responded. “Well, see, that’s the thing. You wouldn’t… You wouldn’t happen to have any more buildings you need built, would you?”

That wasn’t the direction I’d expected this to head in. “I mean, honestly, I’m not sure? Depending on how long the fighters are thinking of spending here, I could imagine they’d want more housing or anything that can make their stay more convenient.” A bar and a bathhouse weren’t nothing, but it wasn’t like we had a real city here. “Maybe something for food storage?” Especially if more kexids showed up, I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to feed everyone from the forest. Preparing some reserves could maybe help?

All of that was secondary to the real question though. “What’s this about? I thought you were heading back to Ftheran?”

“Ehhhh.” He waved his head back and forth. “I could. But I’ll level with you. I’m getting free food. Free housing. That freaky sky of yours finally cleared up. Sleep like a baby with all those darkwood building enhancements. Good booze. And in the span of a few months, you’ve already gotten me two Rare buildings. I leveled, too! Shoved the points into Constitution, probably bought myself a good couple of years.”

That was probably a pretty big deal, now that I thought about it. Considering that there were people in their twenties in Ftheran that hadn’t hit level 10, it probably took most people years to level up. That was likely doubly true for Tuk, who’d already gotten a lot of the lower levels out of the way.

Still, in his position, I couldn’t help but feel I’d still choose Ftheran.

“Tuk, I’m pretty sure everyone but the kexids are eventually going to head out of here. You’d just be building something that would get abandoned in a few months. I mean, you could always ask them if they need help building, but I don’t know if your talents include underground homes.”

He waved his arm in an overexaggerated motion. “Feh. Look, I like what I do. I like people using the buildings I make. But I’m not too bothered if they get abandoned. A level’s still a level one way or another, yeah? You think I could earn this kind of experience back home?”

I mean. I kind of did actually. “I know we got lucky with those Rare buildings, but I doubt we’d find you a third. Wouldn’t you get a lot more experience with an actual entire city to work on?” People had to want new homes once in a while, and I imagined when things started falling apart, there was upkeep to do too. There was a reason the king hadn’t wanted to lend the builders to Emer’Thalis without the scepter — they must have had steady work that was important to do.

He shook his head. “Working on what? We have a city wall. New land for new buildings isn’t popping up every day. Anyway, we only get called in for the official stuff. Pretty much everyone uses all that ‘animated earth’ junk.”

I stared at him blankly. “Animated earth?”

“You- Of course you don’t. Didn’t even know what a blasted town hall did. Animated earth! You hire someone with a good earth shaping skill, and you get them to make a quick and dirty house for you. Popular stuff. Easy to inlay patterns and colors to. Fast and cheap. Doesn’t count as Construction, so the building you get won’t be registered with the system. You can’t use it for something like a town hall, for instance, but if you just need a roof over your head, it does the job.”

Wow. I had noticed that nearly all of the buildings in Ftheran had been made out of something I didn’t fully recognize. It had been almost clay-like, but perfectly smooth instead of being made from bricks. It hadn’t occurred to me that someone had built it with magic though.

Now that I thought about it, a lot of the furniture had been made from the same thing. Even Nadja’s couch had been made from it. The palace hadn’t, but that was probably an actual building with a schematic that gave the city bonuses.

Seeing the gears click for me, Tuk pressed on. “Compare that to somewhere like here where we have unlimited free stone and mana-infused wood just lying around all for free… well, it’s a builder’s paradise. That’s not even counting your nonsense with pulling out Rare blueprints or there being a dryad that blesses my buildings.”

Put like that, it wasn’t actually that far fetched that he’d want to stay here longer. Even if he only stayed for a while, if he could eke out another level from it, that’d probably be a big win for him.

And it wasn’t like I had any reason to say no to the guy. If anything, the only people I’d need to consult with were the shadows: They were the ones who had to feed everyone.

Still, as much as Tuk seemed to want to do it, I couldn’t help but feel kind of bad. “I can’t really say I’m against it, but I doubt the king will keep paying you for it. And I hate to break it to you, but I do not have the money to be paying even just you, let alone any other builders who’d stay.”

“Bah.” He waved his hand again. “Don’t care. Nothing costs money here, you know? Even that girl behind the bar’s stopped charging. Only thing I ever use it for is to tip her. Considering that all I spent it on back home was food and booze and taxes, I feel like I’m still getting the better deal here.”

Huh. Well. That was enough for me, I guess. “I’ll leave the final say up to the shadows — they’re the ones who have to handle all the food stuff — but if it won’t get you in trouble with the king, I’m fine with it. Just don’t expect me to find you another Rare building to wor-”

I frowned, recalling something that hadn’t seemed relevant up until now. I pulled up my quest log until I found the relevant entry: a quest I’d gained while searching the woods with Cal and Hartha.

A Home for the Gods

Build a place of worship for your settlement.

…

You have discovered part of a Tier III Greater Church. Repairing the church or incorporating it into your design may yield unknown bonuses.

“Okay, quick question.” I paused as Tuk stared at me, openly confused. “So… How do you feel about ancient churches?”

That night, sleep came quickly. I’d already done a fair amount the day prior, and then with showing Tuk the spot of the church I’d found, I found myself ready to sleep.

He, of course, had been elated. It was all I could do to tear him away from the basement of the greater church, and even then, it was only because he didn’t have a “schematic that could do it justice.” Apparently the church wasn’t going to be the next thing to be built, but that hardly stopped him from rambling up a storm about it all the way back.

When I awoke the next morning, it was with the sun, still a novel experience after not having it around for multiple months.

Unlike the day before, no one came to collect me. There were no fires to put out. It was shaping up to be a fairly relaxing day, actually. Maybe I’d try to carve something new. I still hadn’t managed to make anything that exciting out of the dark-mana infused wood. It was probably well past time for me to try something more complicated than bracelets.

Briefly, I checked in with Amak. I ran my conversations with both Carpin and Tuk by him, and he had no immediate issues with Carpin being the dungeon master, or Tuk staying for longer than expected. That settled, I immediately pulled up the settlement interface and added Carpin as the city’s dungeon master. Even if I didn’t bump into him, presumably the assignment would trigger some sort of notification on his end.

Still not over my new cantrip bonus that I’d gotten from my Wisdom threshold, I spent a good chunk of time just casting spells. Unlike the day before, I tried to chain them this time around, summoning up a ball of light and then conjuring a sphere of water around it.

If not particularly useful, the result was at least kind of pretty.

It was exciting, though! At the rate that I could cast the spells now, I imagined they’d start leveling in no time. Pretty soon, I’d be getting them all to level 10, and then I’d be rolling in class poi-

I froze.

Class points?

Didn’t… Didn’t I have some of those?

Hell, I hadn’t even realized it because the level up notifications didn’t explicitly say it. Considering how many notifications there’d been, it had just sort of slipped my mind. But I’d leveled two times, hadn’t I?

In some sense, the fact that I’d forgotten was actually kind of a nice sign. I no longer felt like another fight was around the corner. I wasn’t so worried about arena fights or dungeons that I was constantly thinking about how strong my armor was.

That did not, however, mean I wasn’t excited to grab some new skills. After running back to my tent, I plopped myself onto the ground and immediately entered my class space.

The world faded out, replaced by roiling gray fog, and then all at once, I was there.

The class space as ever, appeared unchanged: a small, domed room with three sets of thick iron double doors leading out. The floor was a plain gray, while the walls were a showier obsidian. Small purple icons hung above each of the three exits, denoting the three paths I could choose from.

Thus far, I’d largely stuck to the rooms focused on fighting: The Arcane Weaponmaster, and the Arcane Armorist. I’d needed to. With a new threat always lurking around the corner, being able to pack a punch and to take a hit had been a necessity.

In contrast, I’d only ended up taking a single skill from the room of the Arcane Augmenter. That skill, however — Mana Feet — was probably one of my most used.

Truthfully, I was leaning towards exploring that pathway a bit more. For completeness sake, however, I went through each room, looking at my options.

I started with the Armorist room. Like the others, its side walls tilted outwards, making the room grow wider and wider the further I went into it. Its interior consisted of a giant set of stairs which for all I knew, went on forever. Fog filled the room past a certain point, preventing me from seeing too far.

On each stair were a number of armor racks, and connecting those armor racks were lines inlaid in the floor which glowed with a fierce purple light. Currently, only five armor racks were connected.

Three of the skills in this room, I’d taken already: Bind Armor, Arcane Armory, and Resist Magic. In fact, Arcane Armory was my go-to choice to spend class points on, already at rank four out of five, giving me additional defense on par with chain mail.

Of the options I hadn’t selected, there were only two: Overload Armor, which had been sitting there since my first trip to the class space, and Mana Sink, a more recent addition that had appeared after I’d grabbed Resist Magic.

The first would let me spend mana to temporarily increase my defense. The second looked like it was built to help me with mana issues.

Mana Sink - 0/5

Absorb a portion of mana from enemy attacks. Whenever your enhanced armor is struck by a magic attack, convert 1/25th the damage mitigated by Resist Magic into mana.

A neat addition, although not one that would really shine until I ranked Resist Magic up more.

Having looked over my armor options, I exited the room and made my way to the weapon skills. The layout of the room was identical, save for the fact that the armor racks had been replaced by weapons hovering over pedestals.

In this room, I’d ended up taking Bind Weapon, Arcane Armament, and Overload Weapon. The remaining options were Spellsword/Swordspell which added some physical damage to all my spells and vice versa, and Enhanced Weapon Skills, which would let me channel some mana into any special weapon attacks I had.

Considering I currently had zero special weapon attack skills, the latter was pretty useless. I’d thought I might get one on hitting 10 in Archery, but all I’d gotten was an augment instead.

Spellsword/Swordspell looked a bit more compelling to me, but that was only if I wanted to go for a weapon class-skill in the first place.

The last room, the room of the Augmenter, was the simplest. On the ground floor was a small patch of elevated stone with boots lying on it, corresponding to the Mana Feet skill. On the step above that, the only other available skill was represented by a pair of goggles.

Arcane Vision - 0/1

Allows the user to enhance their eyes with mana. When using raw mana, this will increase the user’s vision and mana perception. Results may vary based on the mana type used.

I considered my options for a short while — my offense was relatively lacking, and my defense was on the verge of being seriously significant — but my heart just wasn’t in it.

I could already tell that this was the one I wanted.

What could I say? It sounded fun. If it was anything like Mana Feet, it would be highly versatile, and on top of that, it sounded tailor-made for me. With my already high Perception and both God’s Eye and Illuminated Sight enhancing my vision, it seemed like taking things one step further would really let me see everything.

And, you know, there’s always more class points I can earn. Plenty of weapons and spells to get to level 10.

With that settled, I went ahead and walked up to the pedestal with the goggles, ready to gain my new class skill.

Would you like to spend 3 class points to unlock Arcane Vision?

I read the prompt.

Then I read it again.

“Mother-” I bit off the incoming stream of obscenity that threatened to pour out of me. I needed an entire three points for just the one skill? How was that any fair?

Then again, you were just thinking about how many more class points you can earn. Getting one every level up, plus every time I raised a weapon skill or spell to level 10, plus every time I learned a new spell class was already a lot. I was pretty sure I’d seen some quests that gave out multiple class points at once, too. In hindsight, this should have been something I’d expected. The alternative would be me grabbing skills left and right.

That, however, did not mean I didn’t absolutely hate it.

“I think I kind of want to save up for it, to be honest.” None of the other skills were urgent to get. It felt like I might as well just wait until I got one more.

Well, this was unproductive and frustrating.

I considered just exiting my class space right then and there, but I figured that while I was here, I might as well look around a bit.

At one point, Cal had told me that her class space had secrets in it: Her space was modeled after a large mansion, and she could find extra skills in hidden passageways and such. She’d seemed to think that mine would have something similar, although if it did, I hadn’t seen it.

“Might as well take a look, I guess.” With any luck, I might even find something fun.