It was so awesome, having the System back!

Well. It was kind of back? Oliver seemed like he had it back in full, but Clark hadn't really noticed anything too different. He'd gotten a solid number of levels, and the stats those provided were nice, but he didn't have his skills back or his [Status] back or anything like that.

Well, he kind of had his Status, but it was a Status that Oliver just told him or wrote down on something for him to read. Which was fine and all, but it wasn't quite the same as having the proper interface to interact with, and get help with skill usage and all that sort of thing. He was also back to being the highest level of the people around him, which wasn't really a surprise, but it did bring him back to the point where he would think of his abilities as 'actually useful.'

Class: [Prince of Shining Streams] (Hero, Light, Water) Level: 14 Major Stats: Recovery 4, Generation 9, Aura 10: (Appearance 1) Regular Stats: Dexterity 3, Mind 0, Capacity 2, Skill 2, Power 7 Minor Stats: Strength 0, Resistance 0, Cohesion 0 Skills (1/2): [Unblemish] 16

He'd put three levels into Generation, bringing him from three to nine, seven in Power, two in Dexterity, one to Skill, and the final point in Aura to bring him to an even ten. That had felt like the overall best way to spread his stats, because now he could actually use [Unblemish] properly. While seven Power was still really low, it was a massive increase to the amount of mana he could bring to bear in a single moment, and that let him fix the nastiest injuries they'd gotten in the last little while with just a single touch.

Now, they hadn't had anything worse than a few cuts and burns, but that was amazing in its own way because it meant none of them were getting hurt too badly! Healers were important to ensure that no wound lasted long or got worse, but every good healer wished that they would never be needed to begin with.

Though, [Unblemish] was good for much more than just healing! As he'd been working with Jacob to build out different kinds of boats, the fact that Clark had been able to just fix cracks and chips and splits in the reeds and wood that they were working in had been great, as it helped them progress so much faster than they might otherwise be able to!

He just needed to be careful that he'd actually [Unblemish] it back to something useful. Their materials hadn't been fully treated and processed, so their 'blemishless' state was still how they'd been growing. He'd learned that lesson when he'd tried to help Henrietta, and while she hadn't been mad, he didn't want to disappoint her...

Their latest version of a boat didn't look much like the boats Clark was familiar with, he had to say. It was a lot more like a slightly rounded box, with no real rudder or bow. It did have pontoons for stability, large bundles of reeds on either side, but it was just a raft, something that could keep them above the water for extended periods of time, and little more than that.

One of their biggest challenges had simply been in getting materials to work with. The reeds that were stiff and strong were also really brittle and prone to split when placed under the kinds of tension they were using.

The thinner and more flexible reeds were definitely a better option to work with, but they came with their own challenges, like being really thin and flexible. Thin and flexible things didn't tend to work very well when loaded up with rocks, or even just a couple of people sitting or standing in it.

Wood, the normal material for boats, wasn't much of an option for them either. Even if they had figured out a way to cure and bend lumber, they had no boards that they could use. Because with no access to a sawmill they couldn't really saw the wood. Though, considering they looked at the wood, surely that would mean they had saw the wood at some point in the past?

Clark thought he was hilarious, but Jacob hadn't even reacted to the joke.

That was sad. But it was also alright, because a bad joke could be just as good as a good joke in the right situation, and even a bad joke was still likely to lighten the spirits of those who heard it!

He still tried to think of a better joke, of course. Because from what he saw, a cutting joke wood leave people far less board than a dull and boring one.

Alyssa had, upon hearing that joke, simply sighed and stopped talking to him for that meal. But that was alright, because it had still cheered her up a little bit. And good cheer was pretty rare among his teammates. Yeah, they were all really happy that the System was back, but they were all too stressed and worried for their own reasons to really relax and just... enjoy the nature.

All of them could really benefit from slowing down, in his expert opinion. The Jump had been amazing from the very start, with so many cool creatures and amazing nature views to admire. Sure, needing to gather enough food could sometimes be a bit stressful, but Alyssa had been able to take care of it so easily it basically wasn't an issue.

And now, Henrietta just had inklings to take care of it! With the nine pseudowyverns flitting around and hunting and gathering they had so much food that Clark had actually needed to let the Commander know that she could actually slow down!

They did have a lot of smaller creatures for food, things like rabbits and squirrels and lizards and birds instead of the larger droopnoses and mossmanes that had been the results of their humans hunting. But Clark didn't really mind. His copper knife was sharp enough, and if he messed up too badly he could just [Unblemish] away whatever might otherwise make the food inedible or just unpleasant.

Something Clark was hoping would happen on the sooner side, was new cooking gear. He'd love a frying pan or skillet, maybe an oven for roasting things in... having soup all the time was fine, but it didn't let him really have fun with cooking. And having fun when cooking was important! A happy chef was like a happy healer, what they made was that much better. But maybe they'd have enough copper soon? Or iron, they were working on getting iron.

A small pair of eyes stared out at him from the shadows, and Clark couldn't help but smile. As he worked on skinning the latest kill an inkling had dropped off, plenty of little scraps of meat that he didn't know what to do with were produced. His bloody hands wrapped around the liver of the treerabbit and pulled it out... pulled it out... there! He got it.

He pulled out the organ and tossed it towards their resident petalfur. The shy, fox-like creature inched out of the darkness it could so easily hide and vanish into and crept towards the morsel lying on the ground. It wasn't that much larger than a housecat, and had inky black 'scales' that bore a striking similarity to rose petals. Even its ears were shaped like little flower petals!

It was adorable, and Clark just wished it would let him pet it, or at the very least give it scritches between the ears. Sooner or later, he'd get it comfortable enough with him to make it work, but for now it was just one tossed morsel at a time getting more and more willing to get close to him.

It snapped up the liver and darted back into the shadows, literally melting away as it did so. Clark just smiled in its direction for a few minutes as he absently continued cleaning the treerabbit. Then he cleaned himself up, cut the meat into bite-sized chunks and added them all into the soup pot... which was also getting low on water, he needed to refill that.

Clark had been warned before the Jump that whatever world they wound up on probably wouldn't have indoor plumbing, and that he might need to get used to outhouses and water pumps.

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Well, the latrine they had on the far side of Tower Stream wasn't too bad, as they slowly filled it back in and kept the smell down that way, and getting water was even easier! He just needed to take a jug and dip by the water pool. The fired clay which served as the edges were carved with runes that acted as a focus for his [Unblemish], meaning a single use of the skill purified and cleaned the entire body of water, and the buried, charcoal-and-fiber stuffed pipe that slowly refilled it meant it never really got too muddy to begin with!

In any case, all he needed to do was to scoop up some water from the pool, walk back to the cooking area, and pour the water into the soup pot. Easy peasy.

Once he'd done so, he couldn't help but wander over to where Alyssa was practicing. She was stumbling around blindfolded by the pile of broken and discarded bricks, trying to find the small piece of copper she'd randomly tossed into the rubble pile using nothing but her mana. He couldn't say for sure, but it didn't look like it was going that well. She wasn't tripping that much, but she wasn't moving with any kind of purpose and Clark didn't see very much magic swirling around her.

Maybe when she and Jacob went out exploring next time she'd have luck, but it didn't seem likely right now.

A bit further out, Clark watched as Henrietta and Oliver were speaking next to a mound of dirt that had smoke coming out of the top. He'd watched the mage build that pile of dirt out of a bunch of branches and whatnot, making... charcoal, maybe?

Past that, there was of course the wall of reeds that marked where First Tower met The Jungle. The reeds were slowly starting to dry out, changing from green to brown, and though there wasn't a ton of magic around them, it was still neat to see how the wisps of Water and Light in the environment wavered ever so slightly.

Then, The Jungle itself. Clark climbed up the red rock of the Spire a little bit to get a better look, finding a small rock outcropping for him to sit upon and contemplate just how cool this new world was.

Clark had been to a few of the expansion worlds when he was growing up, seeing some of the greatest sights in the Empire. From the floating islands of Lamor to the infinitely-tall mountains of Etrushkia, and even the great subterranean Crystal City of Stalhim, there were some awe-inspiring sights to be seen.

And now, he was seeing something new. Maybe he couldn't see as far as when he was on a clifftop, maybe there wasn't quite the same grandeur that came with looking out at gleaming streets, but there was a kind of... pure primality of this world that he couldn't help but marvel at.

Creatures which he would have never seen otherwise wandered fearlessly up to the walls, flocks of beautiful birds winged their way through the canopy, the roar of the Tower Stream as it cut through thick forest. All of it carried with it such majestic splendor. It was a little sad that they wouldn't be able to depose any Tyrants on this world, but seeing a place that was clearly unspoiled by their depravities was in its own way marvelous.

He noticed Henrietta and Oliver looking his way some, so Clark climbed down from where he'd been and made his way over.

"Greetings! It is a most wonderful day, is it not? Did you need some assistance from me?"

Oliver sighed. "No... no, I don't."

"Do you know anything about making charcoal?" Henrietta asked.

He did, actually! "You get it by burning wood. It's the black stuff left when you extinguish a fire."

Henrietta suppressed a bit of a chuckle and Oliver simply muttered something under his breath in Magespeech. Clark looked over at the Archmage, curious if he was about to cast something.

"Anything more than that?" Henrietta asked, "We managed to get that far on our own."

Oh, right. That would make sense, given... well, the fact that they'd had and had been using charcoal already. But sometimes people just needed someone to say the obvious thing, so Clark wasn't about to let himself feel bad. "You could also use a skill for it? [Make Fuel] I think can do it? Could Alyssa use her [Ignite] to make charcoal? I heard she's really good at using her skills."

Henrietta paused, "I suppose it might be worth a try... though probably not useful for our purposes. We need it to be created without our direct input."

"And I'm not leaving a transmutation enchantment that powerful run unsupervised," Oliver flatly added. "Even if I could make it with what we've got now, which I can't, it's just the Dragonfire problem all over again."

"That sounds fun!" Clark brightly piped in.

"You think Dragonfire sounds fun?" Oliver looked at him with a mixture of amazement and shock.

He shrugged, "Dragons are cool."

"Does running the risk of dragonfire tearing across The Jungle because we leave a powerful fire-based enchantment running unattended indefinitely sound fun to you?"

Henrietta put a hand on Oliver's shoulder, calming the man down. "There's other issues at play too. Don't worry about it too much, either of you. But if you do have any ideas as to how we could reliably turn trees into charcoal, that would be useful."

"Couldn't you use something like the kiln?"

"There are some challenges with that," Henrietta responded, "But it is one of our more promising possibilities at the moment. It still seems slightly less likely than making more charcoal like this, but it's probably easier to do with less intervention and with better efficiency."

"How will you even get the wood? Are you going to be making more pseudowyverns to gather it all up?"

Oliver laughed, but Henrietta actually answered, "We're going to need a bit more than just what we can forage. I'm hoping to find a creature strong enough to topple a tree that I can make an inkling out of, which might be... tricky. The trees here are quite strong. I'm hoping to go out hunting to try and find it myself, or see if Ride can find one herself."

"Oh. Do you want any help?"

Henrietta paused, considering his question. "Veeran mentioned that the two of you got to something of a plateau in your boat-building?"

"We've stopped making much progress, if that's what you mean?"

"It is," Henrietta confirmed, and Clark felt the little thrill that came with knowing something and being right. "I want you to take over the charcoal project."

"Really?" Clark asked, delighted.

"Really?" Oliver asked, surprised.

"I want you on projects that better play to your strengths, Smith. Things that need your magic to work at all. If Haleford needs you for something, he can get your help, but I suspect we'll need a lot more engineering on the actual iron foundry than we will for charcoal. Also, if Ride doesn't get her skill in the next few days I want you to start helping her."

"But I had ideas...." Oliver noncommittally whined. "I was going to try and create a contraption that looked for Wood mana present in the fire and cut off the oxygen once there wasn't enough and it was all carbonized."

Henrietta raised an eyebrow, "And you didn't mention this idea earlier why?"

Oliver shrugged, "Too many unknowns. I don't even know if I can manage it."

Henrietta held back some kind of exasperated sigh. "Don't completely drop the idea, I'm sure you can figure out some other time or place you can use it. For now though, leave it be."

"...Yes Commander."

"Now Haleford."

"Yes Commander!"

"I'll walk you through what we've figured out so far. Now, your main goal with this is to find some way that we can make charcoal without any direct human involvement. Everything should be doable by inklings and inklings only."

"Oh... do you have any inklings that can start fires?"

"We can have human involvement at the very start," Henrietta helpfully clarified, "The very start. Enough to make a fire-starting enchantment, or to create a permanent kiln, anything like that. We just need to not be involved for burns afterwards."

"Okay!" Oh, this was so exciting! He had a project all of his own!

"Also try to figure out the right size and type of wood to burn for charcoal. The less processing, the better."

Okay, that one might be tricky.

But Clark Haleford, scion of House Haleford and [Prince of Shining Streams] would never let something as mundane as trickiness stop him!

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