[Catastrophic Failure … 5g Corporis Dust Returned]

  He wanted to be angry. He wanted to feel anything upon seeing the message. He’d become so numb to the failures at this point that he really shouldn’t be surprised. He hadn’t felt anything in ages. Well, not entirely, he did feel one thing. Resignment.

  “That’s that, then.” Merrick pushed his chair back from the poor excuse for a workbench and stretched before wincing. “Fucking burnout, naturally.”

  His channels, the metaphysical routes that his body used to channel magic, were throbbing something fierce. They felt both scalding hot and freezing cold, sometimes alternating but frequently simultaneously. A common sign of over exertion, and one he’d long since decided was synonymous with using his unique skill.

  Looking around his workshop, if it could be called that, he couldn’t help but think back on the last five years since his awakening ceremony. He couldn’t help but think to himself that it’d started out so well and wish he could ask himself how it’d come to this, but he knew how he got to where he was today.

  - - - - -

  Five years prior, he’d been one of the lucky children in his cohort to awaken a skill that wasn’t completely useless. Of course, that had nothing to do with his own accomplishments, the ritual had a massive element of randomness.

  He’d wandered up to the magical well, called the Nexus by the educated and colloquially called the Grab Bag among the children and peasants on account of its bizarre random nature, and thrust his arm into the impenetrable void within before feeling a jolt and seeing a message appear before his eyes.

  [Systema Coniunctionis Duplicatae Supremum Downloading… ]

  After his splitting headache he’d asked the priest what the words meant. His parents were not nobles, but he was several tiers above the illiterate peasant class and still hadn’t understood a single word. That had been the start of his rapid rise and decent in the Stronghold.

  According to the priest, he was not the first person to get a skill in a foreign language. The Nexus pulled its magic from several countries and, theoretically, planes of existence. Regardless, there had been several skills pulled throughout the years in languages that no man outside of the scholars would be able to recognize. The priests, however, knew a few select words that had appeared before throughout the recorded history they still had access too.

  “You’re sure it says ‘Supremum’, boy?” the ecstatic older man had practically shaken Merrick off his feet. Not a difficult accomplishment since he’d only been 15 at the time and the priest well into his 30s. “That word has lead to greatness every time it has appeared. Not only that, but the number of words that appear frequently correlate to the power of the skill! Quickly, tell me what kind of skill you’ve been granted. Pull up your status, the functions should be translated even if the skill’s name isn’t.”

  “Status,” Merrick mumbled to himself, a little shell shocked from the foreign feeling of a skill invading his body. He shook off the residual numbness he felt in his skill and read the words that appeared before him.

  [Name: Merrick

  Class: N/A

  Path: Hybrid/Crafting

  Level: 0

  Innate Ability: Systema Coniunctionis Duplicatae Supremum v1.0

  Skill Tier/Type: Unique/Growth

  Health: 100%

  Magica: 100%

  Stamina: 100%

  Innate Skill(s): Merge, Skill Log

  Skills: N/A

  Spells: N/A]

  Getting an Innate Ability was almost always a cause for celebration, as abilities were widely acknowledged to have a wider breadth than a single skill, usually coming with multiple ingrained skills of their own and an unparalleled level of flexibility in their application. It was also explained to him that Growth type innate skills, or abilities, were rare but not overtly so. The innate abilities were tied to the soul and human souls were primed for growth from the start so it wasn’t too unordinary to get a skill that grew alongside oneself. As for the rarity of Unique, it was, as it sounded, a one of a kind skill. A feat far less impressive than it sounded, as it did not take much for something to be unique.

  If five people had [Slash], a skill known to increase the cutting ability of a strike with a bladed weapon, as an innate skill, for example, one might had awoken a slash that only works with blunt weapons. That could cause the blade of a hammer to increase its sharpness, effectively doing nothing since a quality sword would still cut better. On the other hand, it could cause a club to radiate a slashing type damage awake from the impact zone, causing internal cutting and bleeding. Both would register as Unique.

  As far as Path went, Hybrid paths were usually looked down upon. A Warrior Crafter would, often times, be a worse warrior than someone whose skill solely focused on combat prowess. Merrick was relieved that there was at least there was a specification of Crafting. It meant that, although the skill would work with more than just crafting, it had a specialty and should be especially potent for crafting. The priest was fast to point out that crafting was, in and of itself, also overtly broad as it encompassed all the various crafts.

  - - - - -

  All in all, his awakening of a unique skill was considered the most promising one of his year group. With the priest’s explanation of Supremum and the Path typal of Crafting, Merrick had been able to qualify for a Church financial sponsorship and several apprenticeships. From there, Merrick managed to take several loans contingent on eventual returns when his skill was fleshed out.

  In the last five years, he’d managed to learn several skills to respectable levels and was a natural at most of them. He could make a quality blade, had a deft hand for both chainmail production and sewing, could cook a mean meal, and even fold amazing sculptures out of paper. Unfortunately, he’d never been able to figure out how to make his innate skill work for him.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Now, his once glorious workshop, fitted with middle-of-the-line tools and supplies was nothing more than a large wooden workbench and a traveler’s alchemy set. Everything else had been repossessed by the various noble and merchant households that had invested in his future. After half a decade, he couldn’t even blame them. Most of them would never get anything close to what they invested in to him back, even if they stripped him down to his boxers. An unfortunate quirk of his innate skill, Merge.

  With a practiced motion, Merrick scooped all 5g of the Corporis Dust into a small vial leather sack labeled CORP that he kept in his reagent pouch. He then pulled out his experimentation log, a well-worn leather journal filled with torn pages and scribbled margins of his personal thoughts on his skill.

  “Unable to Merge a Strength potion with Defense potion and Reflex potion. Failure yielded 5 g’s of Corp Dust. Note to self – Corp dust is usually a result of failing to merge physical items, odd that potions yielded such. Need to repeat attempt in the future, potentially change containers to make sure it wasn’t the glass.” He spoke to himself as he dictated his thoughts.

  As much as he wished his log was filled with insightful inroads on his ability, it could almost be called a failure log. He’d learned blacksmithing and tried to merge weapons he crafted, which resulted in Corpious, or Corp as he called it, dust. He had similar results from his forays into cooking, knitting, wood working, fletching, and every other skill. It wasn’t until he got to Alchemy that he finally found a use for the byproduct of his merge failures.

  He'd been reading through different methods of reagent processing and alchemy when he’d learned about a far away tribe that rendered nearly anything they used in alchemy down into various pastes to concentrate their powers. They then would temper their potions through various methods such as concentrating, homogenizing, or crystalizing the potions. Without the bizarre inventions they used to prosses their pastes, Merrick had only been able to apply the knowledge on a theoretical level.

  Although he couldn’t say he knew for sure what his ability was supposed to be doing to the products he was attempting to merge, Merrick was fairly confident that on some level, it was breaking the products down to their basest elements. What that had to do with merging, he couldn’t possibly tell you. He’d gone a long way to figuring out what each of the different dusts he received from his skill did, and had a glossary of some of the cheapest ways to obtain each one.

  Merrick stood up and packed away his alchemy set into his traveler’s pack. He wandered over to the corner of his workshop and plopped down on his sleeping bag, his bed had been taken the week before, and stared at the ceiling. His channels felt like they could support another use of merge but he’d run out of things to attempt to combine. A quick check of his pockets yielded the same results they had the last several times he’d checked.

  One silky smooth ticket on a caravan west bound, to a newly discovered nexus in the middle of a wild zone, freshly cleared of its guardian and ready for someone to attempt to settle a Stronghold. The ticket had been nearly free, on account of the large lethality of similar voyages on the past a necessary evil, considering a number of human Strongholds were lost every decade to monster surges and dungeon breaks.

  The ticket was also, literally, Merrick’s get of jail free card. He managed to get a ticket for next to nothing with a fake name due to his skills in Alchemy. Health potions were a massive boon when attempting to settle the wilderness and an established alchemist was almost never willing to settle a new Stronghold before a proper survey was done and the walls were at least 20 feet tall and enchanted. The Caravan master obviously knew that Merrick was running from trouble, but its not like he was going to be the one losing out on money so he was more than willing to skip a couple of the proper document checks.

  In the other pocket, Merrick could feel a three copper coins. Theoretically he should have given these to any of the numerous people he was in debt to, but it wasn’t like the coppers were going to finish paying off his till anyways. Besides, how are you supposed to split three coins between twenty different entities? Giving any of them three coppers when he owed entire golds would be worse than giving nothing, as the perceived disrespect might even get him gutted on the spot. The coins were basically useless there.

  Now that he thought of it, the coins were basically useless to him as well. He wasn’t supposed to eat for an entire day before the caravan set off on account of the Portaling upsetting stomachs and occasionally rotting food in the stomach, leading to food poisoning. Rotting was probably the wrong word for it. Edible objects were… changed when they were sent through Nexus powered portals. Changed in a way that did not sit well with the human constitution, for the most part.

  All that was to say, he couldn’t use the three coppers to grab himself a meal unless he wanted to risk getting violently ill. He couldn’t buy travel rations either as, without special storage or special enchantments on his gear, they’d go bad anyways and have to be thrown out. There were no meaningful upgrades for him to buy for three coppers and his pack was already filled to bursting, meaning there wasn’t room for additional objects anyways.

  There also wouldn’t be a market for coins in the new Stronghold-to-be either. Not for a while at least, you would only be allowed to use the locally minted currency for a while to prevent greed from stopping rapid development of the community. There had been unscrupulous merchant groups in the past that managed to slow development by trying to squeeze out every copper they could from a new location long enough that another titan class managed to locate the Nexus and wipe out the settlement before it was properly defended. The church quickly banned using external money as well as exporting whatever currency was produced locally for a few years thereafter.

  This change obviously couldn’t stop merchant groups from sending over massive shipments of goods to try and monopolize the local dungeon currency, but more goods being send to the front lines instead of coin to buy every new good and ship it back to a developed Stronghold was better than nothing.

  So, three coins with no use, at least one more use of his skill left in him, and literally nothing to do until the Nexus’ magic reached its apogee early the next morning and the portal was powered for travel. Merrick’s fingers drummed on the ground next to his sleeping back as he stared at the ceiling of a workshop he hadn’t paid rent for in two months, stomach growling as he tried to justify literally burning money for the first time ever to himself, a destitute failed craftsman who was about to flee to near certain doom to avoid debtors’ prison.

  “What am I even hesitating for?” Merrick sat up and pulled his hand out of his pocket, holding the three identical, dungeon forged coins in his hand. Magica began pumping through his channels as he activated his Merge skill and a translucent, invisible to all but him, grid appeared before him.