I awaken bright and early the following morning, in my bed, thankfully enough, and not in an infirmary ward. I check my phone to be sure that I didn’t accidentally somehow manage to sleep through an entire day. It’s the correct day. I’m sure Lindsey would have dragged me out by my ass if I’d managed to sleep through a day without the required forms submitted in triplicate. Or maybe by my entrails, knowing that Chloe would have me patched right up once she was done berating and/or torturing me. Definitely an ‘and’ there.

  I make my way to the mess hall where I’ve got the expected crowd waiting for me. Chloe is already here— not surprising, considering she’s been an early bird ever since we started doing this work for the army.

  I scoff. Work. If we were really workers, we’d be getting paid in real money. But, instead, I’m only getting paid in room, board, and Experience. By all rights, I should be fuming just the same as every starving artist who’s ever been told that her work isn’t worth getting paid. But in this new System-integrated world where Experience is levels, levels are strength, and strength is the only true currency in the new world, I’m forced to take my opportunities where I can get them.

  Breakfast consists of waffles. A waffle and a half, extra butter, no syrup please and thank you. Not as good as the ones Chloe and her mother make. But still decent, filling, and satisfying alongside a glass of orange juice which, sadly, is not freshly squeezed. Still good enough to carry with it a nice acidic tang that, in turn, requires some water to keep the inside of my throat from drying out in irritation.

  There are even more people seeking to interact with me after my little stunt last night. In addition to Privates Jacobson and Nimholt, Chloe and I are joined by two young women, one with bright, ginger hair, and the other with blonde hair, though not quite as light as my own. Such notoriety is the price of making and demonstrating progress in the study of glyphs and Ethertech.

  I have given the matter thought, and I believe the potential risks are outweighed by the potential rewards. Being too open about my class, my unique trait, and the details will invite the sort of scrutiny I don’t need. But advancing quickly and accumulating more resources for myself is a positive. It is also in keeping with my ultimate purpose, to serve as the banner for humanity and all others acting in coalition against the oppression of the System. To that end, recruiting allies and serving inspiration is important, and I should get more practice in social situations.

  “Good morning, Ms. Mortensen,” the blonde says. She sits down across from me and offers her hand. “I’m Private Jessica Tracey, and this is my friend and commander, Corporal Kara Blair.”

  The corporal follows suit, and I shake their hands in return. “I see I’ve made an impression on even more people.” I take a drink of water to give myself a bit more time to think of what to say. “I hope I’ve done so in a good way.”

  Corporal Blair chuckles. “I don’t think there’s really a good way to draw attention to yourself that’s a complete positive for you. Best case scenario, you get voluntold to do more work or extra push-ups. Or something else that might give you some further credentials or expertise down the line. Worst case scenario, you catch the attention of one of the senior officers, and not in a good way.”

  I sigh. “I think it’s a bit too late to avoid the attention of the senior officers, seeing as though I’ve already had the pleasure of speaking directly to the colonel and major regarding my assignments on base.”

  “Ouch,” Corporal Blair says. “I don’t envy you.”

  “I’m not upset about it in the slightest. It’s as you said, a way for me to get more Skills and Experience doing the things I eventually want to be doing.”

  The first day on the job has already proved more fruitful than I’d dared hope, and in addition to my work as a [Planetouched Mechanist], I now have new avenues to grow my abilities with [Glyphcasting]. At this point, the cost to use spells this way is prohibitive. The [Lightforged Sword] spell I imitated was impressive, flashy, and probably fairly destructive as well. It also ate over a thousand points of [Ether] to cast.

  The Skill will help some, especially as it ranks up further. But even if I get a two-thirds reduction in the total cost of a fairly basic spell, that’s still nearly 350 [Ether] per cast for a spell that Chloe can likely replicate by level 40… for 40 [Ether] at most. Not practical as a weapon in actual combat, but as a theoretical stepping stone and proof of concept? This is perfect.

  “What about you, Chloe?” I ask. “What have you been doing these past couple of days?”

  “Healing duty while the soldiers spar with one another. Nich– Er, Major Richardson has been rapidly revamping base protocol, and introducing controlled environments for soldiers to spar with one another, as well as to fight some of the weaker monsters for Experience. I’m in charge of healing them whenever they get in over their head.” She pauses. “It’s a bit of a delicate balancing act that I’m still not completely sure about. The System rewards danger, so my involvement already reduces their Experience considerably just by my presence. But it’s bad for morale if too many low-leveled soldiers end up with serious injuries.”

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  “I hope we’re going to get plenty of hazard pay for it,” Private Tracey says. “I’m so not ready to get my ass reamed out by some monster! I’m only nineteen! I’m supposed to have my whole life ahead of me!”

  Corporal Blair gives her friend and subordinate the side-eye. “Well, we can’t have that, now can we? I wouldn’t want my favorite underling to spend the next two weeks in the infirmary. After all, your chores would fall on my shoulders.” The corporal follows up with a sinister glare, causing Private Tracey to shudder.

  “I– I’d best be heading to the training field, Ms. Mortensen. See you there, Ms. Jacobs!”

  Private Tracey rushes off at a hurried pace. Though, on account of the significant level difference between her and me, I don’t perceive her movements as anything but slow and maybe a bit clumsy. Clumsy even by my standards, somehow.

  Her internal [Ether] suggests she’s no higher than level 5, maybe 6 or 7 if she has a pure physical class and hasn’t invested into her [Mind] stat. The same is true of most of the soldiers, with Lindsey the [Ranger] as the single outlier, being around level 26.

  “If I might ask,” Corporal Blair starts, “your eyes started glowing blue just a moment ago.”

  “Another Skill. Lets me see [Ether], both internal and external.”

  “How useful.”

  I don’t mind sharing this particular secret, since it’s mostly useful for intelligence and reconnaissance, rather than attack. The former might assist and sometimes lead to the latter, but the importance is enough for me to feel like I’m sticking to some vague impression of my ideals.

  “You’ll need to practice circulating your internal [Ether] through the various channels within your body. Once you’ve gained enough mastery with that, concentrate on the channels leading to your eyes, and you should be able to gain the [Ethersight] skill. I know some classes can learn [Identify] or a similar skill directly, but I think [Ethersight] is fairly class agnostic.”

  “I appreciate the advice. I’m going to take my leave as well.”

  “I should get going as well,” Chloe says. The two of them head off together to whatever torturous training the higher-ups have in store for the rank-and-file. Another long drink of water and I’m out the door in the middle of the pack, off to the science building to begin my daily work. Perhaps slightly less immediately deleterious to my physical health and well-being, but far more taxing on my mind and spirit.

  Dr. Reynolds arrives a minute after I do, his laptop in tow. We exchange a few brief greetings as he powers his device on, after which he starts writing some stuff down.

  “I have to say, Sera, this language is rather perplexing. My programs stayed working almost clean through the night, trying to find whatever patterns might exist within this strange lexicon. I think your comment about these symbols— these glyphs, as you called them— being extremely stylized logographs is correct. And so I want to look at groups of glyphs that have similar shapes and sizes to the glyphs you’ve already identified earlier. My hope is that they will have similar meanings as well.”

  We continue down that line of reasoning during the day’s work. And we have mixed success. On the one hand, some of the similar looking glyphs do have similar meanings. In the same vein that some languages have four different words for red but don’t distinguish between blue and green. Or languages that have different words for ‘falling snow’ versus ‘snow already fallen on the ground’ or that ‘puffy white snow’ and ‘dense, slushy snow’ might not be the same, even if English uses the word ‘snow’ to refer to both of them.

  At the same time, consider the word ‘coal’. The word, and the physical object it represents, is multiple different things. It is fossilized, carbonized plant matter compacted over millions of years. It is a source of energy. It is, relatedly, a source of heat. When burned, it produces a flame. And using the same word for all of these different aspects of what coal is and can do, creates ambiguity which is anathema to the precision needed for spellcasting efficiently.

  In these cases, the words are very different for each function. ‘Flaming coal creating heat’ is a very different glyph derived from and appearing similar to the glyph I know as [Heat]. In contrast, one might have better success generating coal by using glyphs for ‘death’, ‘plants’, ‘pressure’, and ‘age’ in some combination.

  Another tricky example involves the words ‘breeze,’ ‘squall,’ ‘gale,’ ‘storm,’ and ‘hurricane’. All five words refer to the concept of wind, with the later ones generally representing stronger wind speeds than the earlier ones. The words in English carry no logical connection, but I would expect that the glyphs would be somewhat similar in appearance in the language of the System.

  I find no signs of any glyphs relating to the concept of [Wind] during our work. I do, however, find four glyphs that are similar to the one I’ve been using for [Lightning]. So far as I can tell, the one I have been using is similar to our concept of a welding arc. There are different ones for ‘static electricity’, for ‘electrical current’, for ‘lightning bolts’. Even though lightning bolts are really just static electricity on a grossly larger scale. Further runic modifications can be appended to the glyph proper to specify the relative voltages or currents, with higher of either being more powerful, but at the cost of a lot more [Ether].

  Another interesting phenomenon I discover concerns using the same glyph multiple times in succession. It does increase the power, but according to a square root law. Two glyphs in sequence produce just over 141 percent of the output of one, while three increases it to about 173 percent. However, the [Ether] cost does increase proportionally to the number of glyphs used. Yet another way to increase power a little bit further, but at the cost of completely destroying what tiny vestiges of efficiency I might be able to get with a higher-ranked [Glyphcasting] Skill.

  The end of the day comes soon enough, with Chloe all-but barging into our office yet again to drag me off to dinner. My objective for the next week needs to be learning as much vocabulary as possible. The more precisely I can choose my glyphs, and the more closely I can match them to my will and intent, the more efficient I can make these spells with my [Glyphcasting]. And that’s the path that leads from an interesting avenue of pure research into the practical applications I need from this project.