Let me start off by explaining that level 4 is usually not a particularly significant level. There is 1 significant thing that everyone can expect though; every 4 levels, you get to add a point to your attributes. This is based on class level growth rather than age, and since it's not related to my race at all, there are no issues using it to exceed racial maximums. I put mine directly into Intelligence. I still do not feel any different when these increase, but I know it has to help. Yay me, though I really wish it was not so difficult to increase attributes.

Beyond the attribute increase, what did I get at level 4? Well, that's why I had to stress usually, because two additional things appeared which I was not expecting. The first unexpected benefit was a new special quality called "Homunculi Creation". The second thing I was not expecting was an additional talent to select. I did not realize you would get a talent at level 4, I thought those were either given out at increments of 3 or 5.

4 works for me though, I'm not complaining, getting a new talent at 4 is good…

Ok so, my health went up, my attack went up, though my number of infusions per day did not. Pity. I continue to look around for changes, are there any new imbuements to look at? Just the one. Having learned a lesson after my last talent selection about making sure to know what I have before making any further selections, I take some time to peruse and review what my new abilities give me before I commit to a specific talent.

First, the one new imbuement:

[Magical Offense:

Imbue weapon with a magical offensive enhancement. Possible effects limited by class level. Duration 10m per level.]

Ok so I can attach not just a bonus to the conventional attack scores from Magical Weapon, but I can add special abilities now. Awesome. Being able to imbue a hatred of creatures is powerful, and the duration is good enough that this might be rather useful. It certainly would have been while fighting One Eye, and it's better to get an ability like that later than you'd want it than never at all. What about that new Quality?

[Homunculi Creation:

You can craft Homunculi by imbuing vessels you personally prepare according to their specifications with a portion of your life force.]

That sounds… Both interesting, and ominous. The rush of new knowledge has not yet subsided, so I relax and allow the new information to process, only continuing once the rush of information has slowed to a trickle and I can focus my mind on what this new ability has taught me to do. In short order I am completely stunned. This skill is completely broken!

First thing I'll cover are the restrictions for Homunculi Creation, there are a few of them but they don't seem terribly severe as long as I'm at least a little mindful. For instance to make a homunculi of this type I might need to personally weave a doll before pouring a couple liters of blood on it and then activating the magical quality. Comparatively a different type of homunculi might need to be sculpted, or made of clay pottery, or whatever. Whichever type I am making, I can only do it myself or in conjunction with methods that are extensions of myself, and it has to be high quality with a few rare materials included, and I have to add some of my blood.

From there most but not all homunculi can do things like telepathically communicate with me to a moderate range, but what is staggering me is that the different types of homunculi have so many abilities. There are spy's and thieves and weaponeers and baggage carriers and warriors and crafters and more. The only restrictions are that they are expensive to craft relative to my current funds, they are individually rather weak, and my life is linked indirectly to theirs.

That bit about life force seems pretty relevant to me. If I die, any homunculi I create will go inert. If they die, I will take some damage for each death as a form of backlash. It's a relief that I'm not expected to give away years of my life or something, but the whole damage as backlash thing combined with their weak individual strength is a pretty compelling reason not to go crazy with the number of Homunculi that you make: a fireball on a group of them could potentially kill me outright. Even with that, the sheer number of options they bring to the table and the ramifications of those options… It’s incredible. I'm not sure that I'll be able to resist making a million of these, even knowing that abusing them can kill me. Who thought that this would be a good idea?! This is too amazing!

Right, right, be calm Elliot. You have got to make them, and you must do so somewhat carefully so as not to leave someone else a means of killing you in exchange for what amounts to basically an army of ants. They can be made tougher, but the cost to do so would go out of control quickly, so it would be best not go that route.

I parse through the options that I've learned about trying to find something that can fake being a human well enough to make it so that Regina would not need to man the counter, but for every single homunculus, it is painfully apparent that they are a creature of magic and not a conventional sentient being.

Oh well… At least I can create persistent crafters now, so there is no need to close the shop the next time I go out of town. Wait a second. If I have a shop, crafting things all day every day, manned by nothing but these toy crafters… Am I? Did I turn into Santa Claus? I check my scaly face to ensure there are no signs of a developing beard and am reassured to find it as smooth as ever. Well, a bit bumpy, but no hair.

Finally, feeling comfortable that I understand my new abilities, I open the talents window to pick my new talent. My plan to check for more general crafting related talents, however, is quickly derailed by the discovery that I have a very small selection of talents to choose from, maybe 2 dozen talents in all, most of which are borderline useless. What the hell is this?

This is my first time hearing that your talent list shrinks over time, I had heard that it was supposed to go the opposite way, with your talent list spreading out so far as your levels continued increasing that it was basically impossible to review all the ones you had available. Is this a quirk of the Architect class? Do my options become increasingly limited over time? That is a disturbing thought, because most of these talents are pretty bad.

It is what it is though, there is literally nothing to be done if that is the case, except possibly take a different class, and this might be a quirk related to having gotten a talent at a weird level for all I know. Most of these are talents I have seen before, and I am about to pick another iteration of Efficient Architect, when I realize that there is at least one talent that truly is new. “Construction”. Like, buildings? Maybe I can build them faster? What does it say that it does?

[Construction:

You are able to build and repair construction(s)]

Gee, thanks for shedding some light on the subject, oh mighty system. That really illuminated things for me, I feel so very, very enlightened now when it comes to the purpose and capabilities of this talent. Honestly my knee jerk assumption is that this really is intended to apply to buildings; I am an Architect after all, it would make sense that some of my abilities and talents truly do focus on constructing buildings.

While I am sorely tempted to get another iteration of Efficient Architect, I have earned far more money than I considered possible in the last 6 months after all, but it is still a long way away from being able to afford many of the things I have in mind. On the other hand, what if this allows me to craft something I could not otherwise craft without the talent? If I knew what it enabled, I would know whether or not it was worthwhile.

I'm pretty sure I'll be selecting Efficient Architect; that talent is just too useful. I've read enough Isekais to know that I'm supposed to be able to pick whatever I want no matter how ridiculous or objectively bad it is, and despite my picks being essentially random and poorly considered I'm still somehow supposed to become the most powerful person in the universe.

But even though I've been reincarnated in a different world? I know that's not true here. Very few of the main characters from the Isekais I've read would've made it through their childhood here, and I can only think of 3 that would've stood a chance of attaining any real power here. Even those aren't guarantees, but someone like Han Xiao would at least stand a chance of being successful here. The vast majority of them, though?

Well, let's not get too distracted. It's enough to know that if I make bad decisions in this world, someone or something else that made better decisions or which simply just got lucky enough is going to kill me instead. So take your time, Elliot, and do your best to try and understand what the tradeoffs you are making might mean.

After thinking about it for a short period, I realize something that completely changes my perspective on the new "Construction" talent. My Homunculi, the ones I gained access to this level and which I consider to be explicitly overpowered, THOSE are considered a subtype of a “Construct”.

Is that what "Construction" means? If I pick this, I can create homunculi? But if that were the case… Why have this as a separate talent? Maybe this means I can go beyond Homunculi, and can craft golems? Why not name it something like craft Golems though? The other crafting related abilities I've gotten up to this point have added an enormous spread of capabilities, even if I do tend to only focus on a handful of the things that I consider to be comparatively cost effective for the ability they provide. Potions for instance can get you to do anything from breathe fire to fly and much more besides, I just don't like investing in consumables, so I spend my time and energy making the potions that are going to provide me the most benefit over time, which requires that they have some sort of universal applicability. Like healing potions.

Looking to my new abilities, Homunculi add an enormous arsenal of capabilities to me, and they are not well known or popular. Golems on the other hand, despite their rarity, are downright famous for being deadly opponents and powerful guardians. I'm not personally powerful, I know that. My approach to strength is clearly designed around empowering those around me. I'm not comfortable needing to rely on other people like this, but it's a reality that I don't have a good way of breaking free from right now. Even if I'd chosen a more conventional class, being alone at these early levels is suicidal, and my class seems to really double down on the "don't try and do everything yourself" factor. Meaning I need some powerful guardians. Which golems certainly would qualify as being.

Alright that settles it. I would be likely to get golems, and in addition to Golems I will probably get some other stuff, too. Even if that weren't the case though, even if golems were the only thing this would allow me to create, I would still consider this to be a worthwhile talent courtesy of their obedience, reliability, and combat strength. I don't know exactly why it has the name that is has, but I'm getting it.

I pick Construction, hoping that it is the right decision to make. If I'm wrong and this doesn't allow me to make golems, I'm going to be exceedingly put out.

A few minutes later the new ability is present, and I have mostly finished ingesting what it allows. Starting with my initial guess, the short version is that to create a golem I would have to craft a magical manual which details how the construct is to operate, and then craft the body for that golem using the appropriate ingredients with several additional rare materials and expensive processes, and then use magic to merge the operational specifications into the prepared golem body.

Beyond that though, this particular talent offers much more that I had not expected. I now know how to craft permanent portals between locations, and how to craft flying magical aircraft, and so on. I am too weak or too poor to do actually do most of this, but the capabilities are insane. Much like learning how to cast an arcane spell won't immediately make a wizard know every spell ever made or possible to make, the crafting abilities provide a number of options that are possible and which you know as a default while allowing experimentation to extend that knowledge, and even the "default" options here are incredible feats of magic.

For a relative understanding of the new ability and what it does differently from what I've been able to do up to now, my ability to manufacture miscellaneous items would allow me to fly via a variety of means, such as magical boots, or a carpet, or a broom, or even magical wings that can be attached or taken off freely. Which, to be clear, is amazing.

By contrast, Construction allows me to do structures and major fixtures. It would not allow me to create some boots to fly with, but if I were strong enough and could afford the materials, I could instead build flying castles and ships. Similarly, miscellaneous would allow me to craft a set of gloves that generate a small force field effect around myself, preventing or reducing injury, while Construction would allow me to extend a giant magical shield over an entire city. In other words Construction is like the “big brother” to the miscellaneous magical item talent, where it allows large scale magical item implementations. Instead of "crafting" something, these are feats of "construction." I still think the name is dumb, though.

There is little that I can do with this talent right now courtesy of having limited funds, limited magical power, and competing priorities, however if I live long enough this will clearly become a very valuable talent indeed, allowing me to create products that frankly just are not seen outside of the ancient ruins of various powerful civilizations.

I think… I think I may have accidentally stumbled onto one of the greatest secrets that the ancient civilizations have ever revealed in terms of their ability to accomplish extraordinary magical feats. Am I going to go down in history as being a revolutionary force for advancement, similar to how Newton and Einstein are remembered? That… That would be amazing, surely, but if it is just coming from a class skill, it is hard to feel as though I would have done anything to deserve such an August legacy… Instead, it mostly just feels like cheating. Not that I'm too proud to use an ability that will provide such significant benefits, just… If history were to remember me at all, I would rather it be because I did something amazing, rather than because I selected a particularly overpowered talent.

One thing is for sure though, level 4 gave me abilities that far exceeded what I had been led to believe was the norm for level 4. As exciting as all these abilities are, somewhere in the back of my mind I feel like there's something very important that hasn't managed to leak its way to my conscious mind, and that's a disturbing feeling to have. It's right there at the edge of my thoughts, but the more I try to focus in on it, the more diffuse that hunch becomes.

I should not get ahead of myself. Right now, we are heading back to Diamond Lake, where I will modify my short term plans slightly to account for my new capabilities, and then proceed apace. Whatever it is that's bugging me, I'll come back around to it at some point. Day by day my foundation is growing, and the idea of being able to make real changes to this world, while still far away in an objective sense, is becoming more achievable with every level.