Chapter 7: Chapter Seven

Luckily, Nightstrike didn't want to head to the WCP immediately. After we set a date we were dismissed from the executive lounge while the higher ranked members of our party ate and discussed details. I in the meantime wanted to run home and talk to Zeke immediately but I knew that wasn't an option at the moment. I decided to take Jessie down to check out the crafting area and look over the job board. I figured that might cheer her up a bit.

She was still looking distracted and upset, so I offered her my arm. "Hey let's go do something fun? I was going to check out the crafting area and look at the board down there where people post commissions. Why don't we go together and we can watch some of the I rank crafters at the counter work on repair jobs." I shot her a smile I hope was comforting. "Come on, it'll be fun to see how the different crafting powers work."

She looked uncertain, but swallowed and forced a big smile onto her face. It was such a pale shadow of her previous cheerful grin it hurt to look at, but fake it til you make it was better than nothing. "Sure, that sounds like fun. I've always been curious about crafting. I bet you'll see some pretty cool stuff that'll give you ideas for your power too." I held back a wince, barely. I was going to need to pick up some skill based crafting knowledge like enchanting or something soon, or else it was going to look really suspicious when I couldn't actually make shit on demand.

Non crafters wouldn't be able to tell the difference between skill and ability based crafting, and since I was H rank any experienced crafters that saw me would just assume I'd synergized enchanting with some wood based power to get the woodworking ability I had. Single skill synergies didn't alter the power too much so they often ended up similarly themed to other common powers. I was just glad the results of my scan were confidential to my intake admins and the guild master, that way no one but them knew the exact skills I had.

Still, that was a problem for future Shane. Current Shane had a pretty girl to cheer up, so when Jessie took my arm I headed for the crafting hall. I'd checked out a map of this place online after my last visit, so I had a basic idea where to go once we retraced our steps back down to the entrance. Luckily the restrictions on the elevator were only for coming up, which made sense since anyone lower ranked who was up there already would be a guest of someone who belonged there.

The crafting hall, unlike the two high ranking areas I'd been to, wasn't all fancy and ethereal. It was mostly just a huge room, though it did have a vaulted ceiling and columns. Still, it was by far one of the most normal places I'd been so far, and kind of implied that the guild master's space office and the executive lounge weren't exactly the norm for this place. I'd just been seeing the higher end facilities and had gotten a skewed view of how the guild worked. The crafting hall, in comparison just seemed more...down to earth, no pun intended.

I liked it. Granted I planned to enjoy those high end facilities once I got to that level, but for now I preferred the transition from normality to go a bit slow. From finding out about my heritage, to learning my mom was still alive, to becoming a candidate and unlocking my powers I'd been on a roller coaster since a few days ago. The thought of just getting acclimated to all this nonsense slowly with the other initiates was pretty nice. Jessie on the other hand seemed absolutely amazed at the place.

Granted she'd seen the executive lounge too, but she hadn't been hanging around the WCP and the The Night Market. I was mostly burnt out on wonder for the moment, but she still had plenty of it left. We approached the counters where the I rank crafters were working. They mostly handed basic repairs from what I knew, but the skills they were using were still pretty amazing. From what I could tell enchanting and inventing were taught to most of them to use as a standardized base, further proof that learning it would be a good call for me.

Inventing was the mad science version of enchanting, more gears and wires rather than runes and light shows. I'd probably end up picking that one up too when I could, apparently the combinations between the two could create some pretty crazy stuff. Most of the big name crafters stuck to one or the other because it took a massive amount of focus to advance even one of the skills, but that was less of an obstacle for me. Jessie and I watched with awe as a nearby I ranker used inventing to fix a mechanical spider, patching a crack in the vial of bubbling pink liquid at it's center.

I had to concede that maybe my sense of wonder wasn't burnt out after all because watching this was amazing. Seeing the inventor's hands flying along the mechanical parts, disassembling and reassembling mechanical apparatuses and replacing broken gears was amazing. Inventing, like enchanting, was a more sedate and repeatable version of a more powerful ability. Mad Scientists were considered a corruptable subgroup so inventors were used by hardcore anti villain groups to fill in the gaps, though they were by and large much less effective at the same level.

I wondered how they imparted the skills to all these I rankers, because while they didn't exactly show off everyone's skills to everyone during the scan (except for people who were open to sharing with each other like Jessie and I) I doubted every one of them had minor inventing or enchanting to start with. Was there some sort of teaching power at work? Did they buy skill crystals for every single newbie? The latter seemed unlikely based on the price I'd seen for the things in the WCP.

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Finally we made it to the job board, and I smiled at the girl behind the desk, a pretty pale girl with flowing dark hair and bright blue eyes with a piercing in her lip and a black corset dress with buckles across the top. Her very red lips curved up in a friendly smile. "Hi there, welcome to the logistics department help desk. How may I assist you?" Her voice was husky and very pleasant, and despite obviously repeating a rehearsed greeting she seemed like she genuinely wanted to be of assistance. I liked her.

Jessie clearly did too, her natural friendliness overpowering her sadness temporarily as her eyes lit up a bit, breathing some genuine warmth into her formerly brittle smile. "Hi! My friend Sh- Solomon, here is an H rank crafter! We were hoping to take a look at the job board to see what kinds of tasks he'll be accepting once he gets settled in and begins his crafting career with the guild!" She almost slipped and used my real name, but caught herself halfway, which I appreciated. I wasn't that worried about it here, but guild rules made it clear we needed to get used to it.

The girl's eyes lit up. "Oh wow you're the new guy! The one who was H rank during intake! I heard rumors you were a crafter but I didn't believe it, crafters don't have much of a chance to gather points before they register." She held out a delicate hand. "I'm Dolly." I took her hand and shook it, and Jessie did the same. "Lame name I know but my ability is dollmaking, and crafters don't usually bother with clever or impressive names. We're usually pretty to the point with ours." Pulling her hand back she waved us over. "Silly me though, you wanted to see the board, come on over."

She led us to a large wooden board off to one side of the desk, absolutely covered with random scraps over paper, most of them incredibly small with very dense writing on them. She grinned as she took in our expressions. "Yeah, it's a cluttered mess I know. We tried encouraging commissioners to keep the notes tiny so there's more room, but they mostly just took it as a challenge to write smaller. The oldest and toughest commissions are at the top of the board, and the more recent ones are at the bottom. When a top row commission gets solved we move one of the ones on the next row up to fill the spot so it's usually a pretty good indicator of what kind of difficulty you're looking at."

She scanned over the board as she talked, flitting from place to place, clearly interested in seeing if there were any jobs suited to her. The bottom half of her dress was a poofy gauzy skirt that showed off her legs and highlighted the thick combat boots she wore. Upon seemingly confirming that there weren't any current jobs that she could do she turned to flash us a bright smile. "So, any questions? The system is pretty easy to follow. Oh, and once you break through the seventy five point threshold you're considered high enough ranked to advertise and let commissioners come to you."

I knew about that from talking to Cap but I hadn't realized there was a specific point value that they used as a benchmark. It made sense though, the system in general seemed to use point values as watersheds, so individual groups doing the same wasn't strange. I started browsing over the jobs, Jessie doing the same as we took in all the strange commissions available on the board.

I had to admit there was a huge variety. Everything from more detailed repairs, restorations, unique builds and artifacts that people were looking for, and even a few alchemy related jobs asking for healing potions or elixirs to boost stats. There was an endless number of possibilities given the vast array of crafting powers. While inventing, alchemy, and enchanting were much better for general standardized learning, powers like Dolly's were the best individual fits for their respective niche. With their greater flexibility in their area of specialization, and supplemented with a proper enchanting skill, they could show impressive results in their field.

I saw a couple of jobs that looked perfect to me, first off, a few of the jobs seemed to be searching for someone to make a prosthetic limb, and a few seemed to be for regular mortals. I doubted I could regrow the limb on an H ranker, but for a normal person or someone in the I ranks I should definitely be able to help. Because some of the jobs were easily failed they could be accepted anonymously, with publication of success being left to the discretion of the crafter if and when they succeeded. That meant I could take some of the prosthetic jobs and wouldn't have to worry about people being suspicious that I wasn't an alchemist or a healer.

Meanwhile even Jessie had found a few interesting jobs. Her Minor Botany skill let her make beautiful flower arrangements and some of these jobs were commissions for special clothing or items for mortals looking to show off their Ascendant created fashion designs. I saw her looking at a few dress and furniture requests, and thinking about it I bet she could grow some very interesting things if she had a basic design to work off. It was nice to see her taking an interest in jobs that could help keep her mind off things. I used my scan ring to snap picks of a few of the prosthetics jobs and get the necessary contact info for me to get some clients then stood back and let her enjoy herself. She deserved it.

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