Even after so much needless death and destruction by a pack of ravenous dinosaurs seeking meals of human flesh, time keeps moving on. It’s been three days now since the attack, and we all are doing our best to put the events of that morning behind us. Chloe spends every morning at the infirmary, while I continue my linguistics work with Dr. Reynolds until lunchtime.

  The two of us have now deciphered close to three hundred of the most common glyphs, and are starting to get a better grasp of the grammar involved. Grammar which is, unfortunately, quite the opposite of English in at least one critical respect. There is essentially no room for error or deviation in allowable sentence structure when working in the language of glyphs. This is oddly reassuring— any deviations in the language of magic create ambiguity, and that in turn creates the potential for things to go wrong. Catastrophically, explosively wrong.

  In that sense, it’s a bit like how I’ve heard programmers speak of their craft. There’s a tiny amount of flexibility in how their code compiles and what the text parser can understand. But an error as small as a missing semicolon or putting a parenthesis in place of a bracket will shut down the entire code. And there are plenty of ways to trap the code in endless repeating loops which have a tendency to, unsurprisingly, violently distend, usually upon the caster.

  After the first day of experimentation, when I burned my right hand down to the muscle attempting a fire spell, I was expressly forbidden from doing further applied experimentation of such spells without a healer on standby. And quite frankly, the overwhelming agony of that experience would be more than enough to deter me.

  But it does mean that Chloe and I can spend some time together each afternoon, me trying new spells, and her inevitably chastising me for my recklessness when things go wrong. It’s something which neither of us felt comfortable asking for, but which I sorely needed. Time with her, without all the army stuff, no orders or missions, just experimenting and chatting amongst each other as we did in those first days following System integration.

  “So, what are you trying to do now?” she asks. She’s taken to her role as my inquisitive rubber duck in human form, always asking me questions, always forcing me to justify every step and every experiment in ways that make sense to her. Her argument has been simple: if I can’t explain it simply and straightforwardly enough that a non [Glyphcaster] with no [Tinkerer] skill can understand, then I don’t understand it well enough myself to be prepared for practical experimentation. And frankly, she’s not wrong.

  “Changing the grammatical linkage between these two glyphs,” I respond. “Instead of [Breathing Fire], I’m trying to create the spell [Breath of Fire] instead. The idea is to have a limited use firebreathing skill.”

  “And do you have the capacity to survive breathing fire? What if you burn something I can’t heal? Or you don’t realize you’ve damaged something until that damage has taken hold and grown beyond my ability to restore. I trust you remember the last time you experimented with fire!”

  “But Anna–”

  “Has a class that gives her Fire resistance, Sera. Do you have Fire resistance?”

  I roll my eyes. My hand will remember long after my brain has forgotten.

  “Good point. Shall I try this with [Breath of Wind] instead?”

  Chloe grins. “Yes. That should be far safer.”

  I don’t know about ‘far’ safer. A jet of compressed, sharpened, and pressurized air can cut through stone, and my flesh isn’t nearly so hard or impervious to damage, level 23 or no. But Chloe seems to be okay with it, and I want to experiment, so I don’t bring up my concerns.

  We step out into the center of the commons. Chloe cordons off the area, which only attracts more soldiers keen to see the demonstrations of whatever madness I end up concocting. I’ve gotten better about ignoring the attention I’ve drawn to myself. Still don’t like it, but I can work through it now.

  I close my eyes and focus on my [Ether] flowing through all the channels in my body. I picture the glyphs in my mind’s eye, along with the order in which I need to draw them to maintain optimal [Ether] flow and resonance. This part in particular has proved troublesome; the [Glyphcasting] skill gives vague impressions of the best way to do so, but it’s much like my [Tinkerer] skill. The help is cryptic, ad hoc, and rarely systematic enough to be of use for the sort of goals I have in mind.

  Still, it does alert me to a minor deviation that should improve my efficiency by a couple of percentage points. And every use of the ability helps the Skill rank up, meaning further efficiency gains. Skill ranks, in general, are one of the most important reasons to train outside of life-or-death battles against the monster hordes lurking just beyond the outskirts. Chloe, for example, has been working on her [Basic Ether Manipulation] with me each night, and is getting very close to upgrading it into the Intermediate variant that I have.

  I again activate [Ethersight], which is starting to not be prohibitively costly in terms of long-term use, and begin my glyph work. First, the outer annulus, then the enneagram inscribed within it. I craft the [Wind] rune as the base, in the center of the spell array, then modify it, turning [Wind] from ‘a breeze of flowing air’ to ‘a burst of air’ in the vein of a concussive wave. Another set of runes modifies the glyph’s meaning further, lowering the area over which the glyph should take effect and increasing the pressure.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Once I have the main glyph in position, I begin with the other glyph I need to add. And here I have an interesting choice. I could use either the slashing ‘blade’ form of [Sharpness] or the piercing ‘needle’ form, as I’ve come to call the two variants I have in my vocabulary. Each has its uses; a slashing cutter of wind should perform amazingly in crowd-control situations, cutting away at objects. And a piercing bullet of concentrated, high-voltage electricity was what let me bring down a monster with a dozen levels on me. I go with the piercing form to limit the risk of blowback and collateral damage to the onlookers.

  I want to keep going, adding in the glyph of [Impulse] to accelerate the attack further, but I decide against it. I’m reaching my mental limit without mental acceleration buffs, and I’m working with enough [Ether] already to remove my legs from my torso if I get carried away and experience a complete breakdown.

  I’m very glad I didn’t correct Chloe about the dangers of the [Wind] glyph.

  My palms grow cold with sweat as I lock the final couple of linking runes into place. The entire glyph shines a bright green, and judging from the gasps from the onlookers behind me, the array is radiating visible light as well.

  I detect no issues with the spell’s construction. I place my hand on the center of the array and release the spell. It’s loud as hell, like a balloon popping just in front of me, and backward force nearly topples me. Chloe braces down and leans forward to avoid the brunt of the attack, and a chorus of surprised gasps fills my ears as the terrifying breeze causes loose hair, headwear, and weapons to begin flying backwards. I’m definitely getting an earful for that last part, even though it’s not my fault people can’t keep their belongings fastened.

  The damage before me is impressive, though maybe not at first glance. I notice a tiny pinprick, perhaps a dime’s width across, on the slab of concrete before me. Mundane concrete, not reinforced by any glyphs or other Ethertech, but still a solid foot thick. That alone isn’t overly impressive, though. My [Ether Bullets] can break apart sheets of concrete.

  What is impressive is that it lost almost no kinetic energy due to friction or resistance while zipping through the slab like it was a piece of wet paper. It tore through that slab, then the next one, before finally piercing through a sheet of half-foot thick steel and dissipating into the breeze. With the [Impulse] glyph added into the spell’s configuration, I could probably double the speed, quadrupling the overall energy and piercing power of the attack.

  Definitely a precision weapon which will require a lot of practice, timing, and advancing my [Trick Shot] skill to make proper use of. But it’s progress, proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that my work with Dr. Reynolds is starting to pay dividends. I need more practice, more efficiency, and more importantly, a lot more practice to [Glyphcast] fast enough for it to be useful in less-than-ideal combat situations.

  As it is, I’m weakened due to [Ether] exhaustion, having just burned nearly a thousand points in the span of half a minute. Once again, I’m forced to rely on Chloe’s help just to walk back to the dining hall in time for dinner. Although, there does seem to be one nice fringe benefit to all the flashy displays. Absolutely no one is objecting as we make our way through the crowd, eager to be the first two to enjoy the evening meal.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” Chloe asks.

  “There’s a chance I knew, but I don’t have a [Psychic] class, so I’m not sure what I knew or didn’t know.”

  “How dangerous that spell you just cast was.”

  “Yes, I knew it wasn’t without risk. But have I ever been one to shy away from risks?”

  “I just wish you would have told me, Sera. Yes, this worked, but what if it didn’t?”

  I pause. “I know. But I can’t abandon this path of experimentation, of trying new things, and sometimes screwing up. It’s as integral to my class as healing people is to yours. Even before the System, I’ve never been one to just settle and accept things as they are. Now? I– I don’t think I could stop trying to push forward as long as I draw breath.”

  Chloe rolls her eyes. “You really are hopeless. Where would you be without me?”

  “Dead,” I say, completely deadpan. “Probably more than once.”

  “Dead more than once?”

  “I hear if you die three times you get a free ice cream sundae.”

  “I’m sorry, but where in the nine hells did you hear that?” Chloe puts her finger to my lips. “You know, forget that. Don’t answer that, and pretend I never asked.”

  I can only sigh as we’re joined by my favorite handler, no doubt sent to keep tabs and collect information to send back to our illustrious commanders.

  “Did everything go well?” Lindsey asks.

  “As well as it could have, given the circumstances. Still too weak and too slow with the technique for it to be useful in a practical setting without five people casting buffs on me and another thirty to shield me for long enough to actually make use of that strength. Ideally, I’d like to develop some more powerful technology that can offload most of that mental load away from me, but–”

  “But what?” Lindsey asks.

  “It’s going to be a lot easier and quicker to reverse engineer preexisting technology than to try to develop and iterate from first principles. Especially when I’ve got a tenuous grasp at best of what those first principles are.”

  “But don’t we–” Chloe starts. I cut her off. I’m aware that I still have that robot arm that I confiscated back at the Tower Gauntlet. But I don’t need that information making its way back to the commanders. Or more specifically, the significance of what that robot arm really is, and what I plan to do with it.

  “Don’t we, what?” Lindsey asks.

  “Need more materials to work with,” I respond. “Yes, Dr. Reynolds and I are making progress with research into glyphs, but I’d like to get more Ethertech items, and preferably items other than simple equipment to work with.”

  Lindsey sighs. “You want to go on a dungeon run?”

  “Not right away. Not so soon after–” I trail off for a moment. “But at some point, once things settle down a little more, I would.”

  “I see. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll at least mention it to the higher-ups and see what they want to do.”

  “Thanks, Lindsey. I appreciate it.”