Magic bloomed at their shelter, and Oliver stared with relief at the flames he and Alyssa had conjured. That had been so much harder than he'd expected it to be. [Scrollcast] was not meant for ritual-work, or at least not rituals without a magic circle acting as an intermediary, and if he'd pulled it off back home he would have expected at least a level or two and a subskill unlock - maybe ⟨Ritual Casting⟩ - but here it seemed like new skills weren't going to be a thing.
"[Ignite]?" he heard Alyssa ask.
"That's the spell we just cast, yeah," he confirmed.
"And the skill name?"
"If a skill is based on a single spell, it typically shares its name, but not always."
"No, that's the skill I just got."
"Wait, you got a skill?" Oliver poked around his soul, looking for the new subskill or skill he would have expected to have gotten for their stunt.
"I did. That felt really weird. How did I know what skill I got?"
"Magic?" he joked.
Alyssa turned towards him, expression unreadable, and Oliver suddenly realized that without [Perceive Emotion] he had no idea why. Uhhh…. Is that amusement? Is it better to assume she doesn't know and I give an actual answer, or to figure she does know, that explaining would be rude, and I should just stick to the joke?
"You know how you can activate a skill by thinking its name?" he asked, getting a nod, "It's kind of like that, but in reverse."
"That sort of makes sense," her expression twisted, "But I don't think I understand any more than I did before. Can you make it simpler?"
Oliver thought for a moment, "Nope. That's the best I got. Are you going to tend to the fire, or do you need me to do it?"
Alyssa looked at him, and Oliver keenly felt the lack of [Perceive Emotion] as he silently fidgeted.
"How about I tend to it while you make another set of clothes for me?" he eventually suggested, when the silence stretched on for too long.
Alyssa paused, then nodded, "I suppose."
Oliver began to scoot over to the fire, only to immediately wince as something pointy dug into his bare skin, then tried to half-hop with assistance from his bad hand and fell back on his butt when his wrist protested with a sharp pain. It felt strained, but he was no healer. Hopefully they'd meet up with either Henrietta or Clark soon to fix it, because [Erudite Enchanter] gave all of zero points to Recovery.
As he mused, he kept moving, and settled down by the fire after a moment to enjoy its warmth, ensuring the messy pile of dry wood they'd tossed together was within reach of his good arm.
Oliver took a deep breath, then promptly coughed as he inhaled a bit too much smoke. It turned into something of a coughing fit, and he turned away from the fledgling flame for fear that he might extinguish it.
Alyssa turned back from where she'd been heading out, "Are you okay? You better not be dying already."
"I'll- hack- be fine," he squeaked back in response. "I'm just bad at this."
She muttered something as she turned away, that Oliver thought might have been "I'll say."
As she left, Oliver was left contemplating the flames. He couldn't sense them directly, of course. His soul, and therefore his arcanoception, was tuned to elemental Knowledge, Technology, and Arcane, not Fire. But Arcane and Fire did have some fairly tight Associations, and there was enough lingering Arcane mana in the area from his and Alyssa's joint-cast session that he could get a general idea as to how the fire was doing.
And it was doing... alright. He put another piece of wood on to get it burning more strongly, and sensed the corresponding flare of mana that nearly pushed the surrounding Tapestry to the point he could cast a fire-starting spell of his own. Because they were in the Mortal Realms, and not the Elemental Realms of Void like their home planet was, there was a tremendous amount of Fire mana being produced by the campfire, pushing back and making the fire burn hotter and brighter. The excess Fire was then spilling out into the nearby Tapestry and interacting with the rest of the mana making up their surroundings.
He caught a few glimpses here and there, as the Fire interacted with the rest of the Tapestry, but his ability to see the Fire was limited, let alone seeing what the Fire interacted with.
Mostly, what he gleaned was the fact he really needed to get a better sense of what was going on. The thin traces of Arcane mana he was using as an intermediary for everything else were slowly dissipating, and with them his ability to sense Fire mana, and with the Fire mana went much of his ability to sense Wood and Nature, by far the dominant mana types around.
So, he just needed to create a source of a mana type he could directly sense. A few moments of contemplation later, he had an idea to try.
"Oh ye fledgeling flame, kindled for such grand purposes, may you be the beacon heralding the age of Technology for this world. For as I feed you timber and leaves, the path forward which shall leave you ordered and tamed for the purposes of industry is by wrapping this twig in a leaf and flicking it onto the flames," he chanted, attempting to mirror the actions and mostly succeeding.
The few insights he was able to glean from the Fire mana left him more confused than anything. He'd been hoping that with the fire would come clarity, and with clarity would come understanding and knowledge, and with knowledge would come power, and somehow all of that together would tell him some spell that he could cast to fix his System, to regain his lost Skills, and summon a fully-furnished workshop for him to work in.
A fool's hope, obviously and in hindsight, but he really needed something, anything to hold on to. He wasn't spiraling, but it was challenging to maintain a somewhat-positive mood when practically everything went wrong and everything you normally could do to maintain control suddenly vanished.
He'd actually had a brief moment of worry that perhaps the mana on this desolate world would actually act differently than it should, but he was able to pretty quickly put to rest that particular concern with simple common sense. If mana somehow worked completely differently here, compared to home, then none of his spells would have worked, their skills would break, and their classes might malfunction too. Mana was mana, elements were elements, and they followed the same rules no matter what or where he was. The only possible change could be if there was a new or different type of mana, but that was... unlikely, for many reasons.
But still, even if the fire hadn't been everything he'd wanted, the hope that he could get better insight into the local conditions of the Tapestry still remained. Knowledge was power even without a class that directly fed into that particular cycle. What he could do with that... he didn't know. The thought of doing anything was overwhelming. But he could be prepared. And preparation was everything.
"You crackle and consume, small one, making your way in this hostile world. Yet of all the things which might encourage you to grow into a beacon of mankind's advancement and prowess, the most effective would be... a giant furnace full of refined fuel being pumped straight into you." Oliver's voice flattened. That had been a bit too permissive a divination, apparently, "Get real."
He wished that he could just spin up a divination, learn what he needed, and be done with it. Problems that could be trivially solved with a spell were the best kinds of problems. And while technically lighting a fire and observing how the Tapestry changed around it was a form of divination, it also wasn't really. Classical divination was best at finding discrete answers to discrete questions, and 'how does the mana flow around here' didn't have a discrete answer.
Besides, everything pulled on everything, so spinning up a spell would change the mana more than let it flow. As did starting a fire, but because the mana wasn't being released from him, there was less interference. Just like how it was difficult to hear what your voice actually sounded like, instead of what your brain thought your voice sounded like, but with arcanoception.
That meant he needed to find or create something that would generate one of Knowledge, Arcane, or Technology mana without directly acting. And, with only two Generation, he didn't make enough mana to passively change the Tapestry around him. Knowledge was immediately out. It was a tricky and esoteric mana type even back home, he was not making it with a couple of sticks and a rock. Arcane... if he was able to enchant something, that would create Arcane. But he didn't have half of what he'd need for that. Technology, though....
Elemental Technology was an element of order, machines, invention, and industry. It was everywhere back home, because everything was ordered and mastered appropriately. So, the question then became, how could he make it here?
'The fire' was the obvious answer. Fire was arguably the first technology, predating everything else. Though the elements weren't Associated, didn't really interact with one another directly, that didn't really matter. Elements were separate, and multiple elements easily could interact with the exact same substance simultaneously.
But, if he were to make this fire into a source of Technology, he'd need to... make it technological. For all that it had been intentionally made, the fire wasn't Technology. If it had been, that would be fantastic. But mana played by its own rules, and no matter where in the cosmos, those rules were the same.
Fire was always Associated with burning and heat, with combustion and flames. While the element also was Associated with, interacted with non-hot flames or flames which didn't burn things, its Center - the thing which the element was most closely Associated with - was the flames resulting from carbon burning in oxygen. That was a fundamental property of the element, like how Elemental Water's Center was pure water, or Light's was sunshine. No matter how weird the magic on foreign worlds would be, that should stay constant.
Because all my assumptions have been so accurate lately, he bitterly thought. But I suppose 'sunshine' probably wouldn't have been identified as the Center for Elemental Light on a world without a sun... would it be daylight instead?
The mana itself wouldn't be different, they'd just have different things to compare it to. There was actually a bit of an ongoing tiff between a few research teams back home debating whether moonlight ought to be considered the Center for Elemental Light, and it was just the lower intensities it tended to appear in that resulted in sunlight coming out ahead previously. Then a third team had come out with evidence it ought to be starlight...
And now he was probably never going to find out what the end result ended up as. Because he was going to die on this barren world.
Oliver tried to shut out the grander thoughts of existential dread and refocused on his current goal, making the fire more technological.
Technology was another element that wasn't super straightforward to work with. Incredible as a tool, but it didn't have a clean Center. Some people said computation crystals, others said gears, others thought internal combustion engines. All had compelling evidence, and all were very irrelevant here and now. Because while yes, creating a machine around it would increase its Association with Technology, if he could create an engine here and now he wouldn't have most of the problems he was facing. And how much that was cause and how much was effect... eh. It wasn't feasible, and that was the bigger problem.
What was feasible, however, was divination! 'What do I need to do to increase the Association this campfire has with Technology' was very divinable, and that led him to where he was now.
"Speak, you tongues of flame, as to how you grow and master yourselves, transforming into the essence of progress as the the forest grants you sustenance in the form of two small branches plucked from the banks of a river and set upon your flanks in unison," he carefully muttered, ensuring he didn't directly refer to himself. Not declaring himself as the caster would be an issue if he was trying to do anything, but right now he was just trying to listen.
Oliver placed a pair of dry branches in their optimal position, timing them such that they entered the fire at the exact same time, and watched the flames eagerly bite into them. "You are such young flames, burning with potential and, unlike the ones which came before you, have been made with intention and given true spirit. With time, you may blaze with power both thermal and ephemeral, yet now all such… Dangit."
The thread of magic escaped him, unsurprisingly. It had been tricky to balance there near the end, but he did like what he was finding. Alyssa had put a lot of herself into the casting, given how she'd gotten a skill offered for it. That sort of thing was Significant, and it showed on both ends.
Wait... Why didn't I get offered ⟨Ritual Casting⟩?
He had decidedly earned it, by casting a spell in harmony with Alyssa. Or if not that particular subskill, something similar to it. He had five open skill slots, to Alyssa's probable two. Realistically, it should have happened when they first made any kind of magic work, let alone the successful cast of the spell.
It's the System, isn't it? Oliver realized what had happened and sighed. He'd thought he was so clever, making sure he installed a more detailed System kernel than was normal into his soul before the Jump, so that he could act as a basic System Node for himself, see his [Status], interact with his Skills easier, even act as a class swap if the conditions were right, and all he'd gotten for it was a System even more broken than Alyssa's.
A tiny part of himself jumped at that invitation, but he shut it down, No. I'm not broken. I am more than my System and more than my magic. I might be doomed to die in the wilderness with no hope of ever returning home, but I'm not broken. Just useless. And even more useless because I can't even get the Skills I'd need to even begin fixing myself without first fixing myself!
Although...
He watched the flames dance, mesmerizing him. They... were alone. They were the first people to ever set foot on this world.
So... maybe he could cheat with that?
A lot of people thought that old things were more powerful. That wasn't really right, but it wasn't entirely wrong. Old things accumulated Significance over time. Specifically, they accumulated additional Association with the magical element known as Significance by existing... but there were certain things that could also add Significance to something. A sword that killed a god. A person who climbed a mountain. A chair upon which The Emperor sat. Those were also ways of getting Significance.
And one thing that was really, really good at accumulating Significance was being the very first of something. Like, to use a random example, the very first fire lit by humankind on the entire world? With the proper treatment, the proper care, and so long as they didn't let the fire go out, this little flame, already being sculpted to become Technological, created through cooperative action and putting their utmost effort into their spell, could become something great.
The First Flame of Man.
It wasn't that yet, it was a long, long ways away from anything like that, but it could maybe someday be something actually useful. Maybe even truly useful. In getting home. Or making a System. The System was in many ways a Significance engine, and to make a System Node, you needed something really potently Significant to run it.
Maybe he could turn this flame into something that would fix him- fix his System. Let him earn skills again. Let him change his class to something that wasn't all but antithetical to this... everlasting wasteland of Nature.
"Ah, you beacon of light and heat, consuming the castoffs of this forest of eternal light and day. May you illuminate the path towards infinity, may you burn forever at the heart of our furnaces and forge metal into weapons, as you request a piece of timber laid directly on top of you."
Sure, a First Flame wasn't as good as the Machine God Io, but it might... it might be something that he could work with.
But... a core to a full-blown System Node... that was just such a massive jump. Where would you even start for something like that? How would you turn a campfire into something that could change your class, help you swap out skills, level you up, notify you of problems, act as an access point for the internet... host the internet, in this case. Provide magical analysis of classes and skills, aid with healing, and the million and one other things that the System did on a regular basis?
A chill unrelated to his bare skin caused him to shiver.
Here he was, naked next to a tiny flame slowly growing larger, and he was expected to build an entire System, create a portal on his own? His very soul felt like it was being scraped raw by sandpaper thanks to the overwhelming amount of Nature around him, his spells were weak and feeble, he'd lost his spellbook and all his supplemental skills. He was useless, according to Alyssa, and he was broken on a level deeper than she even knew.
Was this a mistake?
When his advisors had told him he stood a good chance of joining the Forerunner program, Oliver had jumped at the option. Because why wouldn't he? There was nothing cooler than being a Forerunner. Of taking a Jump across the dimensions, rescuing an entire world from the brink of destruction...
And of course, getting awesome new magic. The Jump primed whoever went through it to be able to pick up the local magic. It didn't matter if it was hereditary and only available to people born on a certain day of the year, or if it required a disciplined diet from the age of two to unlock, Jumping would guarantee that you could utilize the new magic system to an often-extreme degree. Even when the new worlds became properly integrated into the Empire at large, most kinds of magic weren't 'contagious' enough to be learned by new people.
So, if Oliver had wanted to get some new magical power outside of the System, a Jump was the best way to do that... and he clearly hadn't given enough thought to how incredibly difficult getting home would be. Everyone had just said that he would do great, the Program runners had all but waved him through all of the tests, and he'd never given much thought to it beyond making sure he said goodbye to everyone he knew for at least a decade before he left.
He... he missed home. This was like camping, but infinitely worse because there was nothing out there, nowhere that he could return to. The only thing he had, the only thing he could do anything with... was his little flame.
And he would do such great things with it.
"Whisper to me, ye flickers, of the ways in which you may grow in power and in purpose, becoming the mark of Technology on this world, fed by the forest as it bestows itself upon you in the form of a twisted forked branch placed right here," he placed the requested branch in the appropriate spot, and a brief burst of mana caused Oliver to stiffen in delight.
Technology. It had been brief, but it had been there.
"Here you go," Alyssa prodded him with her foot, dropping off the new leaf-tunic she'd gotten for him on the ground next to him, where it landed with a whumph.
"Oh, thanks," he grabbed the new outfit and carefully shimmied into it, "It's really awkward not wearing anything."
Alyssa considered him for a moment.
"What?"
She shook her head and walked away.
That left him puzzling through what she was thinking as he tended to the fire. Then, he puzzled it too hard as he absentmindedly put too much weight on his bad wrist and nearly tumbled headfirst into the fire. He recovered, fortunately, but the accompanying yelp still shocked him.
"Why don't you go sleep," Alyssa offered, "I'll watch the fire."
"Sounds good. Don't let it go out," he nodded, somewhat limply. He'd finally gotten it to be Technology about as often as not, and he did not want to restart it. It was at the point that it should be self-sustaining, and not need his constant divination-directed tending to work, but that was extremely dependent on it staying the same flame.
And besides, if that fire died, there would be no reviving it. Yes, he could make another one that could serve as a beacon of Technology to him, but it would lose a ton of Significance, and entirely eliminate its 'original fire' status. It wouldn't be hard for him to make a container to make the fire live forever under normal circumstances, but until he could scrape together at bare minimum some kind of furnace or lamp or something, the fire would need to never go out if he was to make it into a First Flame of Man.
"Thanks," Alyssa replied, which seemed a bit confusing. He would have thought it was relatively self-explanatory, but some people were just nice. Oliver didn't inherently think Alyssa was one of those people, but maybe she was in a good mood.
His earlier doze notwithstanding, Oliver found that he wasn't well-equipped to actually sleep. The light was too bright, the ground too uncomfortable, his mind too full of everything to properly sleep. He tossed and turned for so long he started to wonder if he'd ever sleep. When he did finally lose consciousness, it was thanks to the gentle, soothing feeling of Technology against his soul.
But he awoke to the sound of howling.