Icarus Awakens

Early afternoon light spilled through the front of the library and warmed Daniel’s back. He’d been reading for several hours at a breakneck pace, jumping from book to book instead of finishing one before moving on. Each was like an encyclopedia of its own detailing information from levels one to three, though the books didn’t seem to be complete references. Artificers weren’t mentioned at all, and one of the forewords warned that rare classes didn’t awaken frequently enough to properly study. He did find an entry on the Totem Warrior’s Regeneration power, which was shared by a ‘Berserker’ class. Like everything else he read it was absorbed into his phone and displayed in a way he better understood.

Regeneration (Feature, Endurance, Domain: Restoration, Mana Burn, Level: 1)

You possess the Power of a Healing factor, improving your natural healing rate and expanding what you can recover from. This effect scales with endurance.

- Mana Burn: Healing rate is increased during rest, scaling with the amount of consumed Mana required to fully restore you.

- Level: 2: Improve passive healing increase by 50% for a minor mana cost.

- Level: 3: Improve passive healing increase by 100% and grant modest resistance to Disease and Poison for a small mana cost.

Additional layers of complexity were piled on as he continued his way through the books. Mana burn and feature heightening seemed to be competing concepts. By now, Daniel had discovered that features were passive powers that did not cost mana to function, whereas abilities were more on the level of fireballs: burst effects with a direct mana cost. Abilities didn't have any way to improve themselves beyond attribute scaling, but features were another matter.

Heightening a feature required being a level greater than the feature’s base form and unlocked additional power. This required mana, and spending it this way also capped your maximum mana. This process allowed something awakened at low levels to be relevant even as someone climbed higher. A feature could be heightened at any time as long as you had enough mana and didn't have to be raised all the way up if you were multiple levels above the base version. This lasted until mana was restored at dawn, which reset everything.

Mana burn, on the other hand, rewarded a conservative approach by disposing of mana left over at the end of the day for a positive effect. His general impression was that this was stronger than what heightening could do, at least out to level three, but required careful use of mana to effectively deploy. Most powers didn't have this auxiliary effect, though Regeneration did. It fit with when his wounds had and hadn’t healed on his journey to Hagain Village. I could have healed my arm on the second island if I hadn’t spent all my mana on the time stop. What it didn’t explain was why his phone wouldn't show the power on his character sheet. The conundrum of his development path only grew more obscure with the knowledge of the books, not less.

As Daniel continued to read, he considered the powers he knew he had. One’s pretty useless without any formulae and I’m not too keen on using the one I have. That was a lie. Flying through the air on wings of lightning would be a dream, he just needed to solve the many problems of its current design.

He heard the front door open and was surprised until he remembered this was supposed to be the public library. People should have been streaming in and out of here with the concentration in the village at an all-time high.

“Are you the librarian?” In an instant, Daniel knew the voice belonged to someone beautiful. Unlike the avianoid Quala, this person was putting effort into sounding as alluring as possible. He turned and gaped at the most recent arrival that stood in the light coming from the windows. It was impossible for her not to have a class. Instinct told him that, yet she was unarmored and unarmed. The only thing that could be considered a weapon was a strangely reinforced accordion on her back. The face was human and had the only completely clean skin he’d seen since coming here. She looked like she was passively using an app filter by the marbled appearance of her cheeks. That was normally something Daniel found distasteful, but with her full focus on him, it played differently.

“My name is Evalyn,” she continued as if she expected the stunned silence. “I’m hoping there’s a better record of the survivors here than the Roster.” She winked and added, “Maybe you could help me find it?”

Bard? Daniel numbly thought. His phone buzzed with a notification that he ignored. The books he had read included explanations of common Bard powers, but at the moment he couldn’t remember anything besides her. “Uh-” It was just like when Gadriel had tried to make him confess. Something was pressuring him to divulge information he didn’t have. At least this time the experience was more pleasant.

She frowned as he didn’t answer and turned to the shelves. “Sorry for bothering you.”

“N, no it’s fine,” he mumbled. Suddenly, his mind cleared.

“You need to work on your charisma,” she laughed with her back turned, not unkindly. “That ripped through your little heart like it was a leaf. It’s a shame, you’ve got potential. Not many men here care about their skin.” Not many men spent a lot of time indoors or practiced regular hygiene either, Daniel assumed, but he didn’t mention that point. Three books were dropped on the floor as she continued to search for what she needed.

His blush remained despite whatever had affected him coming to an end. Women didn’t need mana to make him flustered. She, like many people, provoked questions. Was the instrument her Focus, or was it intrinsic in her voice? Why was she looking for survivor records? Did she have a boyfriend or husband? The people here didn’t wear rings so it was hard to tell. She probably does, he thought, and then had another one. Oh, damn. I hope those last two questions aren’t related.

Evalyn didn’t find what she was looking for before Daniel could find his courage. “Well, thanks anyway. Maybe I’ll look you up next time I’m here.” Her smile haunted him long after she left.

…

Daniel’s next visit came as the light from the windows stretched to the back wall. They were just as friendly as the first, though not as attractive. “Hey Guy!” Thomas said, carrying two trays into the library.

“Thomas!” The man wasn’t who Daniel was expecting. The medic was also moving with something that could be considered a walk instead of his normal pace of a half run. “Uh, thanks.” He accepted the tray. Still the strange braised meat, but the fruit had been replaced by a steamed grain. “Why?”

“The librarian sent me. He’s a bit more than I would’ve expected.” He took a sedate bite of his meal.

“Are you alright?” Daniel asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“I just.” He thought of the best way to say it. “You always seem like you’re going at max speed.”

“Oh, that.” Another long bite accompanied by a lax wave of a hand. “You’ve only seen me on the job. I was the only healer in my village before all this. I had to get things done quickly with all the idiots going off fighting monsters and getting hurt. Some at their wall were even trying it to get a class that way. Idiots.”

Daniel nodded and took a bite of his own. “So, you’re on break?”

“Reassigned actually. Our other healers like Quala are coming back to switch out with us.” Thomas lazily scratched the back of his head. “Kinda surprised they’re sending me with Kob since I didn’t want to fight in the first place. Not like I can heal most of the people on the team, but our new Commander insisted and you can’t say no to him, can you?”

The books Daniel read today had expanded his understanding of general healing powers in addition to his own. Clerics like Thomas could receive restorative powers more often than other classes, though they didn’t have a monopoly on them. Healing abilities were also more common than features like his Regeneration, with a notable exception. Healing Hands was a Cleric only power that provided a passive healing factor weaker but akin to Regeneration and worked on whoever they touched. Based on how handsy Thomas had been that first day, it was reasonable to assume he had that.

When determining how much an ability healed, the level of the user and the target were both important. A higher level caster could heal a lower leveled individual more than one of equivalent strength, and could do nothing for one above their level. Clerics like Thomas, Daniel thought, pondering on how real religion seemed here during the conversation.

They were halfway through the meal, the talk up until this point being one-sided in Thomas’ favor as the cleric relayed several points of gossip. Not about anyone he had directly treated, that seemed to be against some code, but telling second-hand stories about who was caught in a tent they shouldn’t have been in was fair game.

“I have a question if you wouldn’t mind,” Daniel said when there was a break.

“Go for it.”

“Do you just worship one god or all of them?” He asked the question carefully. Daniel knew religion could be a touchy subject, especially when said religion excluded the possibility of other worlds like his own.

“Well, I don’t worship that much.” Thomas leveled the half-stripped bone in his hand at Daniel. “I’m no preacher. Not to say I’m an apostate or heretic, of course. And, just the Hand. I’m in it to help people, no one needs my help finding a god.”

None of the books had gone into great detail on the gods, but Daniel could’ve guessed the sigil that belonged to the Hand. He’d only seen it on Quala, with the medical tents, and on one of the Realms. “Is that one associated with healing?”

“The Hand is responsible for the restoration domain,” Thomas confirmed. “Don’t know much about Clerics do you?”

“Not really.”

Thomas glanced around at the books. “Well, one of these would probably tell you, but I don’t mind, Guy. Lograve said to wait until he got back so this topic’s as good as any to pass the time. It’s down to what specialty you want if you want one at all.” He pulled out a metallic emblem suspended on a chain from beneath his clothes. It had the sigil of the cupped hand on it and was probably Thomas’ Focus. “I always knew I wanted to help people, I just didn’t know how until I got my class. Heh, that's an entire other story for another time. Anyway, picking my church wasn't hard. Scythe was out, obviously. Destruction domain,” he clarified. “And no one’s crazy enough to choose Hourglass. The church to that god in my home region only had one follower. People who don’t want to follow any specific god just worship the Octyrrum, but they don't really have a church like we do. Not a common choice.”

“Is it responsible for the universal domain?” Daniel asked. His encyclopedia had contained references to it.

Thomas shrugged. “I guess you could call it that. There’s no formal name as far as I know. Octyrrum Clerics get variety but no specialization. To each their own.”

“Huh.” To Daniel, it sounded like there was far more depth and control in the Cleric class than others, if you could get predictable power sets by bowing to the right statue. He actually felt a little jealous considering he was an Artificer without any way of getting more formulae. It was possible he could buy them, but that just brought him back to the sinking feeling that the game he was in was in the mobile genre. “Are people going to be good without you there to heal them?”

“Oh yeah, don’t worry Guy.” Thomas leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table, giving a quick look to the door to make sure it was just the two of them. “We’ve got other Clerics, and normal people who know blood’s not supposed to be oozing out of someone. Crest, even if we didn’t have that, Quala should be coming back and she must be the strongest Hand Cleric left in the region.”

As with everything magical he experienced, Daniel’s mind produced far too many questions to ask at the same time, and he had to pick one to start with. “Can people be brought back from the dead? I don’t have anyone who needs that, but it doesn’t look like the books cover that kind of power. Is it really high level, if it exists at all?”

Thomas gave him an odd look, half-suspicious of something, and Daniel worried he’d once again set off someone who was once friendly. It could be that bringing people back from the dead was impossible or related to something distasteful like necromancy. He was dealing with an alien culture, even if it was close enough in other areas that he could interact with people without endless confusion. “Yeah, that’s a thing,” Thomas said eventually, uncharacteristically falling silent as he picked up one of the discarded bones and drummed it against the tray. He didn’t seem angry at least, and Daniel decided to leave it at that. After another minute of silence, Thomas launched back into his earlier stories as if nothing had happened. Daniel relaxed as the tension eased and his background thoughts turned once more to wondering what the arcane trickster had in store for him.