"I see you've gotten your hands on some copper and learned the basics of metalworking," Lark says. "Did you bring materials for learning to carve gemstones?"

The platinum blonde Gleam refugee has made herself at home in Corwen's workshop. We don't do a lot of metalworking here, due to the lack of accessible deposits of metal in the area, but my ancestors clearly felt like having equipment available was important even if it's not used much.

I bring out some of my pile of shiny rocks to show her. "I got a bunch of these from a dungeon. They're weird rock monster eyes and not real gemstones, but I figured they'd still be good for practice."

Lark picks up one between two fingers and examines it thoughtfully. "They're certainly colorful, if nothing else. They'll do the job. Your Dexterity is likely much lower than a typical adult, but that shouldn't stop you from unlocking skills. Shall we get started?"

She had to leave behind much of her specialized equipment when she fled her home domain, but we make do. The detail work is a trial, but I have another idea for a skill that will help. I pull a pillow out of my bag and rest my wrists upon it as I work. The concept of softness entails preventing damage while working, and I believe unlocking a related Enhanced Hands skill will help my crafting immensely.

"A pillow?" Lark says with faint amusement. "Do you need a nice cup of tea, as well?"

"Nah, I'll just look out a window when my Inspiration meter gets low," I say. "But my trusty pillow has already got me three enhancement skills."

"This place is very different from Gleam," Lark says, walking over to look out the window as complex emotions ripple through her aura. "Everyone's so friendly. Soft. Gentle."

"Oh, there's still jerks out there," I say. "But the Corwens are good people even if we're a bit weird."

After shattering several of the fragile crystal monster eyes, I get the system message on my first decent result.

Skills increased: Discipline (Focus), Maintenance (Cleaning) Skill acquired: Crafting (Lapidary) Description: The ability to shape gemstones, crystals, and glass using techniques such as cutting, sanding, grinding, and polishing.

"Got it!" I exclaim. "[Lapidary], huh?"

"You were expecting something else?" Lark asks.

I shrug. "Maybe [Jewelcrafting] or [Gemworking] or something. A lot of my skills have 'building' or 'working' in the name."

Basalt is repainting the school. He has a bucket of lovely azure paint and a long-handled roller brush that looks like it came from a hardware store. Must be a dungeon drop.

"Corwen's in dire need of a handyman," Basalt says. "I'll probably wind up spending most of the fall repainting and making minor repairs around the village. It'll be some good experience."

"Sounds like fun," I say. "I'm working on absorbing the concept of softness into my hands."

Basalt grunts. "Well, good luck with that. Do you think it'll work?"

I shrug. "I think so. I'm hoping to be working on a lot of small, delicate tasks. Jewelry, machinery, sigils. I don't know what all yet, but I want to lay the groundwork. I've got a lot of skill grinding ahead of me."

"As a dwarf, most of my special enhancement skills are very much the opposite of soft. I'll leave that to you."

I keep at practicing with the gems until I run out of crappy crystals, and swap off working with my pillow on other pillow-friendly tasks. Which is to say, not copper casting. I have a lot of other skills to catch up on, though, and I'm not going anywhere for a while. Aunt Rosemary wants me to study, and no one is objecting to my studying being cushy. Maybe I could simply wear pillows?

September becomes October and the sky changes from orange to red. Aunt Savannah stands in the wind in the village square as she announces what flavor of scheduled monster swarm approaches this year.

"The world stirs," Aunt Savannah says ominously. "I can hear it on the wind. The moans of the dead echo across the domain. The murmurs of the undead horde do not rise above Elite rank. A pack of Heroic werewolves is on the prowl, and their bloodthirsty alpha has let out an Epic rank howl."

"Can't be too Epic 'cuz I can't hear it," Griffin puts in.

Aunt Savannah ignores him. "In addition—"

Somewhere in the distance, a bloodcurdling howl sends shivers into my soul, and ravens descend upon the crowd. A flurry of various magic bolts rise from the crowd to strike down the flying monsters.

"In addition, there are Basic rank ravens," Aunt Savannah continues once it's quiet again. "A great many of them. When using them as target practice, please be certain that you do not cause damage to property or family members."

Basalt says quietly next to me, "You seriously have monster invasions every year?"

"Yep," I say cheerfully. "And this sounds like a light year."

"Those werewolves she mentioned didn't sound light," Basalt says.

"Yeah, there aren't any Legendaries out this year," I say.

Basalt heads up to the stairs leading to the top of the walls, and I follow along after him.

We find my cousin Daisy on the wall, now 19 and wearing her maroon Crux Academy uniform. Holding a spellbook in hand, she casts a fireball into the air, where it explodes in the middle of an unkindness of monstrous birds. After a cut-off squawk, only charcoal falls to the ground where they had been.

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"Nice shot," Basalt says. "Five in one!"

"Hey, Daisy!" I say. "This is Basalt, newly spawned dwarf. Basalt, this is Daisy, my cousin back from wizard school for the holidays."

They exchange pleasantries as we look over the edge of the wall out at the approaching undead horde. All along the walls around us, flashes of magic light up the night as relatives and guests defend the village from about five million angry birds.

"Where do they even come from?" Basalt wonders.

I pinpoint what angle they're coming in from and estimate their movement speed and how long it has been since the sky turned red.

Skills increased: Enhanced Mind (Calculator), Search (Measurement)

"There's no entrance to the In-Between that I know of that would have gotten the zombies here already," I say.

Daisy wrinkles up her nose. "I had to write an essay on this for my Dungeonology course. It's called Elderberry's Uncertainty Principle. Aether cores know where you are looking. People have tried to find where Tempest's monsters get to Topside before."

"You know, on second thought, maybe I don't want to go to magic school," Basalt says.

Black clouds of monstrous ravens drift across the red sky, raining talons upon anyone below them. Aside from the fact that they're comprised of birds, they move just like one would expect of a normal cloud full of normal weather.

I keep to my studies, both my own and the ones Aunt Rosemary thinks I need to know. I also make a bunch of copper buttons, and I'm glad copper is endlessly reusable because I mess up quite a lot of them trying to get the holes right.

We shear the devil-goats on October 31st, because that's apparently the appropriate date for it.

"Go ahead and take some of the Basic-rank wool to practice your [Tailoring]," says Uncle Winter. "You've outgrown your clothes."

Shearing devil-goats is even scarier than milking them. It's nerve-wracking to take a sharp object near a drafthorse-sized goat with fiery red eyes and expecting it to stand there passively and let you do what you want. I have no idea what compelled my ancestor Corwens to keep these things as livestock, but having normal barnyard tasks be tests against dangerous monsters is certainly an explanation for why Uncle Winter made Epic when I never see him do anything else.

Their strong black wool takes a good deal of effort to cut, but I manage it. I even manage it without having to rush outside to breathe and look at the sky too many times.

Aunt Dahlia helps show me how to make a nice set of padded wool winter clothes/armor. I am determined that if I'm going to wear something in winter, it had best do both. It will be cold and I'm probably going to be fighting. Devil-goat wool is pretty strong and a few extra layers of it underneath my cave lizard hides would be welcome.

You have crafted a Fair quality garment. Skills increased: Tending (Animal Husbandry), Discipline (Fear Resistance), Crafting (Metalworking, Tailoring), Enhanced Hands (Labor of Love, Mass Production) Skill acquired: Enhanced Hands (Gentle Touch) Description: Allows greater fine motor control in manual tasks, letting you limit unintended damage and side effects. Your Dexterity has increased.

The system notification is a rush, and I can almost feel the energy surging into my hands. I hold up my completed padded armor and examine it with satisfaction. It might even not fall off as soon as I try to run.

I stand up and pull it on. It's a little loose, but that's alright. The coat buttons in the front and comes down to my knees, with the back split up to the waist for easier movement.

Aunt Dahlia inspects how the coat sits on me. "Hmm. A little crooked and one sleeve is longer than the other. Try the buttons and make sure they all line up correctly. Good, good. Now, are you going to make another as a Hearth Day gift for your sister, too?"

"Maybe."

I think I've gotten enough skill to try making the ring. I don't have as many of the boss gems, and if I mess up the spirit-aspected one, I will need to make another trip to the Living Stone Caverns next year to kill the jackalope boss again. If it hadn't been so annoying to get inside, I would have run the dungeon several more times for supplies.

Casting the copper rings is the easy part at this point. Then it's a matter of cutting and setting the aspected crystals, with Lark's guidance. These are a little more durable than their crappier counterparts, and with the addition of my new skill, I only manage to mess up two of the five stones beyond salvation.

The earth-aspected stone from the badger boss is my first success, and once I get that one down, the creativity-aspected topaz from the bear feels easier. Finally, the spirit-aspected false amethyst from the jackalope follows close behind.

Skills increased: Crafting (Lapidary), Discipline (Patience)

"Hey, Basalt," I say. "I've got a belated naming day and/or early Hearth Day present for you."

I hand him the copper ring with the polished rounded green stone.

"Hmm, not too shabby," Basalt says, then adds cheekily, "Though as a 'dwarf lord' with a hall of stone, I'm a bit wary about accepting strange rings." He tries the ring on, only getting it to slide onto his pinky.

"Nonsense," I say. "I don't even have mind control powers yet."

"If you wish to make a visit to the Spooky Grove in the middle of swarm season, I will accompany you myself," Aunt Savannah says. "I can get us there in much less time and will be able to hear anything long before it gets near Corwen. The werewolf pack is up north at the moment."

We set off with just her, me, Anise, and Juniper, but Basalt decides to tag along when he sees us heading out. Aunt Savannah graciously lets him axe any Basic zombies in our path, while Anise deals with the perfectly flammable ravens and Elite zombies.

We head in to meet with Estelle, skipping the tea this time, and take up a spot in a room with a window from which I can see the sky.

"Crude, but adequate for the purpose at hand," Estelle proclaims the spirit ring. "Did you learn the skills I recommended?"

"I learned [Compartmentalization]," Juniper says slowly, pronouncing it carefully while clearly reading it off a system screen.

"I did not, but [Fractal Consciousness] is doing the job fine," I say.

"Are you ready?"

I open up another fractal and stir Liu Xing to wakefulness. [Hey, wake up. We're back here.]

[Ah,] Liu Xing replies telepathically. [Yes. Here. I did not wish to speak it aloud in front of her, but I do not fully trust this woman.]

[Neither do I. I don't think she means us harm, though.]

[Her knowledge is far from perfect or complete,] he points out. [She didn't intend to do this to herself, either. Still, in her current state, I don't think she's capable of causing serious harm to us beyond the physical plane. She could destroy our body easily but there's very little she could do to our soul.]

[Do you think this will work?] I ask.

[The binding talisman is low-level but well-attuned. I will not be able to use any skills you would be unable to perform, and my ability to do even those will be severely limited. But yes, it will be fine if you bear in mind that limitation.] A mental chuckle. [Ah, to think I would be the ghost ancestor in a ring one day. Let us do this.]

"We're ready," I say.

Estelle reaches out an astral tendril toward the shining bulb on my soul vine that represents Liu Xing. She can barely reach it, barely grasp it, and I don't think she'd manage if Liu Xing weren't helping as much as he can without Elite rank.

Skills increased: Recollection (Astral Vision), Enhanced Soul (Fractal Consciousness, Salubrity, Gentle Soul), Enhanced Senses (Celestial Inspiration), Clairvoyance (Telepathy)

"It is done," Estelle says weakly. "Test it to ensure that it works properly."

Juniper takes the ring from me and fits it onto her thumb. "How do I— Oh! Yes, I can hear him."

"Is it everything you hoped for, little one?" Anise asks.

My little sister makes the first genuine smile I've seen on her face in months, which makes all this work worth it.

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