With satisfaction, he felt the microscopic pumps form like gooseflesh all along the length of the construct. As the pumps began to do their work, they robbed the fire of an oxidant and the fire guttered and died in a swath around the ether. Gus pushed out in different directions, this time using the energy of heat to fuel the creation and snake after snake unfurled like New Year’s Eve party favors.
With the insurgence of clean air, the smoky smell dissipated and the light playing immediately outside the tent dimmed more and more. Gus kept pushing, and while the areas near their tent became inert, the flames continued to sustain and allow the ether constructs to extend further and further away from the tent.
An indeterminate time later, Gus found that he could reach no more. Using Wreckognize again he saw that around his network of ether constructs remained blackened char and ash. He let his constructs drop and blinked back to himself. At some point he had fallen back on his butt, his hands in front of him, palms up.
A slow clap sounded over his shoulder and Gus turned to see BoJack beaming at him. He wiped at a tickle on his chin and saw that a thin trickle of drool had slipped out somewhere along the line. He hurriedly wiped it away before BoJack could see.
“I did not expect that…”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“Oh no, mate. I thought you’d give it a go and then I’d have to show you something to mimic. You were quite in the zone there for a bit. How are you feeling?”
“Better now, kind of like I just took a good nap, actually. I feel oddly comfortable and relaxed. Is that typical?”
“Hmm, not that I know of mate, but that’s choice. Good on you for figuring that out. I knew you could do it. I’d check your logs. Probably some good news there, if my guess is right.”
Some of the accumulated strain from not sleeping had significantly dissipated somehow through crafting and focus with the ether constructs. He basked in the feeling for a moment akin to a mental massage. When he opened his logs, he found BoJack was not wrong.
Chapter Nineteen
You Don’t Know Jack
You have leveled up the skill: Ether Crafting to level 2!
100 XP awarded.
200 FP awarded.
You have leveled up the skill: Ether Crafting to level 3!
150 XP awarded.
300 FP awarded.
You have leveled up the skill: Ether Crafting to level 4!
200 XP awarded.
400 FP awarded.
3,710 XP to level 21.
“Is that it?” Gus mumbled aloud. “I thought there would be more levels or XP.” Gus thought he saw BoJack wince a bit, but it could have been his eyes playing tricks on him. It was dark again in the confines of the tent without the open flames raging.
“What did you level up to?” BoJack asked.
“Only four in Ether Crafting.”
BoJack grabbed Gus by the shoulders, turning him to look directly at him. “That’s actually amazingly good. I can see we need to work on perspective with you. It’s just strange that you have no frame of reference so you can’t tell what is a great gain versus normal progress versus a plateau. Listen to this, Gus: don’t let yourself get discouraged. At level five, you may be able to unlock a healing sub-skill of Ether Crafting and can start cross-leveling, which gives you double the XP for the same effort.” He let go of Gus and sat back on his cot, leaning back and crossing his legs.
“Healing and crafting? What’s that all about?” Gus questioned.
“It’s a little complicated. Let me see if I can explain. Most of the other supers don’t know this, but my wife and I were doctors before I ever became a super. It’s how I discovered my powers, and I got mine late in life, relatively. How old do you think I am, Gus?”
Gus assessed the man. “I’d say late twenties, early thirties.”
“Try seventy-three years old.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, mate. Seriously. I started out as a healer and evolved to other specialties, but that’s what I am at my core. It does have some fringe benefits.”
“Okay, you’ve got my attention,” Gus said as he followed BoJack’s lead and sat on his cot.
“I got my powers in the early Nineties, when powers were fairly new to the world. At the time, I was still working at an internship while my wife was working full time at the same hospital. This was before supers were in control of most of the world’s governments, and it was a different time.
“To handle the stress of my workload, I had taken to meditation and a lot of visualization. Whenever I did my rounds, I would try to visualize what processes were suboptimal and what needed to happen to make my patients healthy again. Somewhere along the line, patients under my care started having an unusually high recovery rate.”
Gus leaned forward, listening intently—he loved origin stories.
“After a while people began to notice and accompanied me on rounds, but no one noticed that I was doing anything that was out of the ordinary or special. Hell, I didn’t know what I was doing either. Things were going well for a while, then we had a series of challenges all at once. I won’t go into it, but it was an incredibly hard time for me and my wife. And it only got worse from there. Ultimately, the issues took over our whole lives and I left my internship and stopped practicing medicine altogether.”
Gus sat up straight. “Were you indentured? I heard medical school was so expensive
