He needed more information. With only ten minutes left on his timer, he couldn’t wait and look it up in a library. He had to figure this out on his own. Actually, that wasn’t entirely true.

Hugo looked up and said, “Have either of you heard of a Utility Mage?”

Both Karina and Birgit shook their heads. Hugo frowned. That wasn’t much help.

“It’s a common evolution of the formation domain. Did you just rank up to thirty-two?” the older nox across the aisle said.

Hugo turned to him and said, “Yeah, I did. I have ten minutes left to make up my mind. I haven’t heard of any of these options. Utility, Manufacturing, and Avian.”

“Utility Mages are common because they are useful. Plumbing and security will always be in demand,” the nox said, “I would recommend against the Manufacturing Mage option. The guilds tend to take a dim view of mages with that evolution. No one wants the market to be flooded and crash. I haven’t heard of the Avian option though.”

Hugo gave him a ritual bow and said, “Thank you very much. I appreciate the knowledge.”

The nox waved negligently, “I am sure you can pay me back by the end of our journey.”

Hugo hadn’t been planning on paying the older nox, but he had to admit that his perspective was valuable. It solidified his thinking that the Utility Mage option was a good one. He wasn’t going to pick it though.

If the Avian Mage option was unknown, it meant it was rare. It might mean that he had stumbled upon a rare and powerful evolution. He pulled up the description again.

Avian Mage

Buff:

Grants designs of four types of airborne devices. Designs geared towards scouting and aerial defense. Comes with three active tethers.

Debuff:

Designs over four feet in length are exponentially more mana intensive.

Yeah, he was going to choose this one. The buff was useful and possibly unique. Even if he didn’t like the flying golems, the debuff wasn’t much of a restriction.

With a confident smile, Hugo mentally selected Avian Mage. As he did, he heard a faint buzzing sound and a chill rushed through his body. A moment passed. All of a sudden, a torrent of information poured into his mind. Schematics and diagrams tumbled through his head. These things were incredibly complex. It would take him hours or even days to make one. They were mana powered machines that could fly around and observe the world around them.

He found that he could create four different types. A Raven, Hawk, Hornet, and Beetle. Despite the names, none of the designs looked like birds or insects. They were rounded cubes and oblong machines. He guessed the names were more of an indication of their function than form.

The Raven was a basic design, a flying golem with optics that gave it a 360 degree view. The Hawk was built for speed. The diagrams listed a speed in units he didn’t understand, but he figured it was fast. The Hornet had a weak mana pulse weapon. That was neat. The Beetle was similar to the Raven, just with much stronger armor.

Hugo itched to start fabricating right away. He was stuck on this train with nothing better to do, this was the perfect time to get started. Too bad he couldn’t make any of them.

He didn’t have the right materials for it. Well, he had most of it. Mithril would be perfect for the circuits, titanium for the body, porcelain for the transducers and the resonators. He already had the mana stones needed to power it. He could buy and shape the crystal needed for the optics. But he didn’t have void steel.

Void steel was integral to the flight capabilities of the flying golems. The void-aspected metal would negate the weight of whatever it was touching when full of mana. The impellers didn’t have enough energy to lift the avians by themselves. Void steel was imperative, but he didn’t know how to get some. He hadn’t even heard of the stuff before the knowledge was pushed into his brain with the evolution.

He felt robbed, honestly. This was an evolution of a formation domain, but to take advantage of it he needed something that wasn’t on the element list. He sighed and started fabricating anyway. If he could find a source of void steel, he could complete the design. He might as well have the rest of the work done now, so he wouldn’t have to wait long once he found some void steel. Plus, he was just excited to get started.

He decided to start with the Raven. It was the simplest design. The schematics recommended that he start from the inside out, so he took a mana stone and fabricated a mithril cage around it. Each successive component would connect into that cage and draw power from it. One at a time, Hugo followed the diagrams in his head to fabricate the Raven piece by piece. He had to restart several times.

Unlike anything else he had ever fabricated, the tolerances for the Avian components were razor thin. He needed to fabricate the same pieces two or three times before they would fit into their slot. The impeller was particularly difficult.

As he tsked and threw another piece of metal into the reject pile Karina spoke up and said, “What are you making over there? It looks complicated.”

“It is,” Hugo said and set down the half completed Raven. He thought about how much he wanted to share. Evolutions are rare enough that the information about them is valuable. He said, “I won’t be able to show you the finished product, sadly. One of the components listed is void steel. No one at home has even heard of the stuff. That’s one of the reasons I am traveling to Soweto. Hopefully the capital will have more information about the metal.” It wasn’t true before, but it was now.

Birgit scoffed good-naturedly, “You don’t need to go to the capital to get some, I have seen it for sale at home in Makhanda.”

Hugo brightened up at that. “That’s wonderful news. I still have to visit Soweto for other reasons, but if I can’t find void steel there, I will come visit Makhanda.”

Karina leaned forward, showing off cleavage, and said, “You should totally visit us. Mom runs a clinic on High Street, I will be there most days until I get my domain. I am hoping for formation, you make it look so fascinating.”

She said that last word in such a breathy way that Hugo almost laughed. Her mother was right there, how did she feel comfortable flirting that blatantly? Not that he didn’t like her, she seemed nice and her physical charms were considerable. Still, there was something off-putting about the way she was throwing herself at him.

Hugo's new body was handsome, in a rugged sort of way. He just didn’t think he was attractive enough to warrant this kind of reaction from Karina. Maybe he was just her type. The Acomarians had thrown together a random face, and that happened to be Karina’s dream guy. He wondered if his looks really were completely random. Did the Acomarians have a plan when they constructed this body for him?

Hugo went to the bathroom and stared at the face he would have for the rest of his life. The hair was familiar, it looked a lot like Cristain’s black locks. He looked at his skin, it was darker than the one he grew up with, but not as dark as some of the bodies he had recently inhabited. He was shocked to notice a very faint line on the side of his face, the same spot as the scar on Rebane’s face. Now that he was looking, he found more similarities. His eyes were the same forest green as Lina’s. His ears were slightly pointed like Xhosha’s. His square jaw was just like Florin’s. A few more moments of looking confirmed it. This body was an amalgam of all of the bodies Hugo had worn.

He smiled.

He felt much better about this ersatz body now. Knowing how it was made gave him a connection that he had been missing. Looking himself in the eyes would remind him of the true friend he had once in Yasmin. Seeing the slight point on his ears would remind him of the love Xhosha’s family once gave him. His square jaw would remind him not to be a jerk even if he got rich. He was connected, not just to the memories of growing up in Reval, but to all of the lives he had lived since.

A good mood washed over him and stayed with him for the next few days. He knew who he was now, not in an intellectual way, but in an emotional way. It took him a total of two days to complete the Raven, but he didn’t mind how long it took. He felt settled in a way he hadn’t been in a very long time.

Shortly before they got to Makhanda, the train was attacked again. It was routine at this point, and Hugo had taken to always defending the train when he had a chance to rank up. He was already up to rank forty now. He had put eight points into dexterity as he ranked up. Now he wasn’t pulling a muscle every time he moved without thinking. That still left him with eight free points, he decided to save them for now as he thought about what he wanted to do with his future.

This time tier four ghasts were attacking the train. The nox nearby took their strange pots with them up to the roof along with him. There weren’t as many defending the train as usual, which Hugo thought was strange. Anyone below rank sixty four could benefit from killing a ghast or two.

The ghasts obviously had the shadow aspect. They looked like twelve foot tall skeletons wearing a thick robe of pure shadow. Tendrils of shadow propelled them along in such a smooth way that they looked like they were floating. Low moans carried across the forest, their voice creating an area shadow attack. Hugo wouldn’t want to be in the forest with them, that was for sure.

“Light?” the younger nox said.

“Of course,” the older nox said and tapped the runes on his pot. When they were ready, beams of pure light burst out and started burning away the monster’s cloaks.

Hugo was slightly jealous of their weapons. They were so versatile and were only powered by the nox’s own mana. The four handled pots had the ability to shoot six different elemental attacks. The older nox was experienced enough to always pick an element that the attacking monsters were vulnerable to. The pair of them consistently outperformed Hugo. Not that anyone was keeping track, but still.

With a practiced motion, Hugo sent six exploding bolts towards a ghast in the back. That was his one advantage, no one else besides the conductor had his range. Speaking of the conductor, he was working for the first time this trip, burning down ghasts that got too close to the train. Hugo focused back on his own fight.

The six bolts had all hit the same ghast and exploded one after another. The ghast seemed disorientated from the blasts for a moment, but then it pulled its shadows back together and continued on. Hugo sent another six bolts at the same target. It had the same result. The ghast seemed only mildly inconvenienced by his strongest attack.

Hugo lowered his crossbow and looked around to the others. The nox nearby were still burning down one after another. The alchemist was sending bright potions one after another, each one a kill. Everyone but him had known the elemental weakness of these monsters. They were prepared for it, but not him.

The annoying thing was that he knew the light rune. If he had prepared for this, he could be contributing too. As it was, they would be past the ghasts before he could inscribe an arrow with light. He grumbled to himself and went back down to his seat.

He needed to add elemental attacks to his quiver. He couldn’t rely on explosions to kill everything. It took a bit of experimenting, and some disgruntled seat mates, but he soon had a dozen light bolts. He had tweaked the rune so it lit up a narrow beam of light at first, and then overloaded into a bright flash a few moments after it was activated. Hugo was hopeful that the beam would help him quickly aim and fire on target.

The other elemental rune he knew was fire. He actually knew a few of them. Sadly, there wasn’t a place on the train to experiment with those options. He made a few, but he didn’t think about it much. He figured any monster susceptible to fire was also susceptible to explosions.

He didn’t know of any monsters weak to water, but he knew the rune so he made a few bolts that would pump out water on command. The low efficiency of the rune meant that it would only create a few gallons, but it was something.

Gust was next, but a quick conversation with the nox nearby revealed that there weren’t any local monsters vulnerable to wind. He almost moved on, but then he remembered that many bows were inscribed with that rune. He couldn’t think of where to add the rune to his own crossbow that wouldn’t mess things up. However, he could add them to the bolt. If he focused the effect backwards, it would give distance to the bolts. Not that he needed it, but it couldn’t hurt to try. He was mostly just experimenting to get his mind off the fact that the Raven was so close to being done, but he couldn’t complete it.

He was waving goodbye to Karina and Birgit when he realized there was another rune he had been forgetting. He had even used it on a weapon before. The disregard rune. He immediately made a dozen. The complex rune slowed him down, but he knew that there would be a situation where these bolts would come in handy.

Once he was done with that set of runes, he ran through the other ones he knew. He already had a few with the sharpness rune, those were his piercing bolts. Ignus was used on the exploding bolts. Durability wouldn’t be useful on a bolt. Cold runes! He had almost forgotten the first rune he had ever learned.

Getting an effective cold bolt was difficult. The standard rune was optimized to be mana efficient and slow. He had to change several parts of the rune so it would burn through the imbued mana and get icy by the time the bolt hit the target. He gave himself minor frostbite on his hand when he finally succeeded.

The nox near him said that many monsters were also susceptible to the earth and nature elements. Sadly, Hugo didn’t know any runes for those elements. They refused to share theirs. Not that he really expected something different. Runes were a closely guarded secret everywhere. Still, while he was visiting Soweto he planned on seeing if there were any runes he could just buy the diagram for.

Done with expanding his repertoire for now, Hugo loaded the bolts up on an optimize ritual and used oblate to improve them all. It took three mana stones to get them all, but he figured he wouldn’t regret the expense.

The second to last day on the train started with him tweaking the design for his crossbow. He was feeling limited with just six bolts at a time. He wanted to see if he could figure out how to hold double that. Or barring that, a faster way to reload. He planned on fabricating the new design and then running it through the optimize ritual. He did a quick count of his mana stones to make sure he could afford it. There were more than he was expecting.

He realized that he hadn’t eaten a mana stone this whole journey, when normally he would have eaten two by now. This was fantastic news. It meant that the mana density out here was enough that he didn’t need mana stones anymore. He could live out here instead of at home on the wheel and not have to buy another mana stone.

Hugo looked up when he felt the train starting to slow.

“Monsters, F2. Approaching from the north. Again, Monsters, F2,” a uniformed young man yelled out and dashed to the next train car.

Hugo put down his papers and grabbed his crossbow. He almost walked towards the ladder and then stopped himself. No one would be leaving the train for this one. F meant tier six. They would all be lucky if the whole train wasn’t destroyed.

Instead, he walked up to the thin windows on the opposite side of the train. His heart beat faster as he looked out and saw what was coming this way.