§096 Training (Patreon)

Taylor popped into Twilight while still a slime, perched on Saria's counter, with a pyramid of indigo marbles piled next to him. He had only been gone for an hour, but the Army of Lightness was gathered there to cheer his return. When Taylor found the class skill for turning back into a human, he misjudged the space around him and knocked into the stack of marbles, spilling his payout everywhere. Indigo was a highly-ranked color; now, they were all over Saria's house.

When his friends were finished cheering, which took a while, and done laughing, which took substantially longer, Premi declared herself his personal tutor.

"Mobility, ability, and inventory! Those are the essentials of learning a new form," she declared. "Starting tomorrow, you will practice every day."

"I took slime so nobody would summon me," he reminded her. "The whole point is not to use it."

"Every. Day."

"But…"

"If you're on my team, and you have an alternate form, you will learn to use it!" She was in full pelican mode and pointed a five-foot-long wing at his face. "No exceptions!"

"If you're so good at alternate forms, why is your dwarf form so feathery?"

"So I can be a flying dwarf! What? Did you think just anybody could pull that off?"

So, in addition to everything else he had to do, now Taylor had to endure slime training. Premi was as fanatical about "getting the basics right" as Taylor was, but instead of magic, her specialty was monster forms. She even brought in the highest-level slime she knew to help with the sessions.

The class skill was called Slime Time! and, surprisingly, Taylor didn't need to be summoned to use it. He didn't even need to be in Twilight. He could change from human to slime while walking down the streets of Midway if he wanted to. The whole experience turned out to be fascinating, but only after he got past the phase of needing to shout "Slime Time!" at the top of his lungs to activate the skill.

He could do a lot more than squeeze through narrow cracks under doors. He could roll faster than he could run, and learned to employ small barriers to counter air resistance and cavitation at high speeds. He could change his color, opacity, and texture. Slimes were extremely sensitive to vibration, so his touch and hearing were exquisite when he focused. He was learning to swim, but the undulating wave motion was so foreign to him that it would take a while to be any good at moving through water.

Most of his body was expendable, except his "core", which Taylor thought of as his nucleus. If part of him were cut off, he could rejoin with it if he was quick enough. And if he relaxed, really, really relaxed, he could pass through a wire mesh and emerge on the other side in one piece. If he were pushed through all at once, then he might die, but by going slowly, he let his nucleus reform on the other side as he went.

The one thing Taylor couldn't do in slime form was speak. He could jiggle in a friendly way. He could form pseudopods and pantomime. He could take on a fine metallic shine or turn pitch black to show his mood. He could even produce noise, but only one note at a time that sounded like windchimes.

So he couldn't talk, but he could form an appendage and write. He acquired a pen to do it with, one that was textured for easy handling by a pseudopod. It might be possible one day to write with the pseudopod alone by storing ink inside his body, but it would take a while to develop that level of control.

There was one other advanced trick he had to work hard at, and that was pulling items from his satchel while he was a slime. Alternate forms weren't true transformations, but conjured objects that the mind inhabited. His real body still existed in some dimensional space, still alive, and, in theory, he could still move it.

Assuming he had his satchel on him when he changed, Premi assured Taylor he could reach inside his bag, rummage through it, and pull out whatever he wanted. He just had to find the thing first, but locating his real body and accessories from his slime form was proving to be a challenge. It was like learning to sense mana without the right tools: a journey of frustrating failures.

That wasn't to say his struggles were entirely in vain. His  spatial magic improved to the point where he could put small items into his personal void space. It was tiny compared to his satchel, but he could access it while he was a slime. It wasn't perfect yet: he was prone to dropping things when he was excited or asleep, and the objects would tumble out of nowhere. He started carrying a few rocks at all times, tucked away in his personal inventory, and tried to hold onto them. It was like learning bladder control, but for extradimensional spaces.

He kept Slime Time! a secret from the mortal world. Not even Kasper or his servants knew.

For a few weeks after he was summoned, Taylor travelled almost constantly, spending more nights away from Midway than not. Some of the trips were hunts, but he was also building his network of portal trees to his Other Place. As he visited one city after the other, he purchased weapons in discrete quantities and explored his options for regular purchases of food and other supplies from around the empire. Not only was steel in short supply, but good smiths were becoming rare. So many were hired away to Avimore that the rest of the empire was hurting. As the imperial capital was the city Taylor most wanted to avoid, that left him with few options for hiring metalworkers to staff his planned refinery in Uroda Mountain.

On the days when he was home, Taylor taught Rasmusen the mana attribute conversion system. After a considerable amount of debate and a field trip to Bostkirk to confer with Taylor's fellow researchers, they finally agreed on the general terms of a deal. There was too much to gain from the system to keep it exclusive to the church, so they all agreed to publish the system, including the features for purification magic, but withheld the symbols for divine magic. It was the church's problem to keep that particular secret. As they were preparing the first book about the system, someone suggested Permutation as a name, and even though Taylor didn't like it, the name stuck.

Not only did Rasmusen finish his quest to Join the Mana Revolution, he earned points in a new Mana Permutation skill. And yet, he didn't leave Midway. Instead, he took a temporary job assisting the local priest and continued to study magic with Taylor, and even helped him learn several of the spells turned over by the church. Rasmusen was intelligent, studious, and obviously cared about the people around him. That was surprising for someone who grew up in an imperial palace. Then again, the law of large numbers dictated that any family, even an imperial one, could produce a decent person now and then.

While all of that was going on, the last of the boarding house's real boarders moved out, and Ophelia moved in as Kasper's tutor. At that point, the building was entirely occupied by Taylor's household, his putative allies, and people sent to spy on him. Cook, Blake, and even Chambers were obviously pleased with the new arrangement. They were working in the house of their master, someone important enough to attract a priest from Home Priory and multiple probable spies. Twice, he caught Chamber smiling while she thought nobody was looking, happily dusting the shelf of divine figures and talking to Moya, the goddess of hospitality, like they were old friends.

Without workers and smiths to staff it, Taylor's volcano refinery project ground to a standstill. But he had monster parts and materials from Twilight to sell, and he hadn't seen his sister Cecilia in a while. That's how Taylor ended up in Celosia, in the early days of summer, with Blake and Kasper for company.

Celosia had the best monster part market in the empire and a vast lake that Blake had never fished. They also had a magnificent public library. Since Ophelia wanted a few days off to visit her family in Bostkirk, it was a perfect opportunity for "the guys" to visit Celosia.

They followed Taylor's usual routine: they checked into a hotel in the city's Arctown district, and he immediately sent five cards by the next post. The first note went to Cecelia, an offer to get together after her classes or at any time of her convenience.  The local governor and the principal of Celosia Academy got cards announcing his arrival because they had asked to be notified whenever he was in town. He sent one to Prudence asking if she was interested in handling monster parts, and another to Princess Landestra from Dimmik, with whom he had a passing acquaintance. That done, he checked in at the local branch of Dwergbank. Permutation magic was days away from being published, and a fistful of patented designs with it. If any urgent messages or business had to be handled, it would come through the bank.

With the preliminaries taken care of, they put his little sailboat into the lake. The tiny vessel was barely big enough for the three of them. Taylor bought it thinking he would use it alone, but life had turned out differently since then. He reflected that, just maybe, he could purchase a bigger boat. He could even think about inviting more people.

The three of them fished in the middle of the day, shoulder to shoulder, and didn't catch much. But a poor day spent fishing was a pretty good day, and the three of them returned to the hotel even happier than when they first arrived.

The afternoon post brought twenty cards for Taylor, which was surprising because he had only sent out five. A few of them required an immediate response, but he was missing the one card he wanted. Cecilia was probably in class and wouldn't receive his card until later that evening. Since he didn't want to wander around campus looking for her, he decided to answer one of the invitations immediately: the summoning professor at Celosia University.

The usual next step was to send a card verifying the times that he could meet, but there was nothing improper about dropping by in person to visit the secretary who kept the department's calendar. If Professor Rahel just happened to be available, all the better. And if Cecilia just happened to walk where Taylor could catch her, then it was good luck instead of impatience.

Blake and Kasper went toward the public library to look up local fish and the best ways to catch them, with enough coin on hand to pay for their entrance fees and optional snacks afterward. Meanwhile, Taylor braved the campus.

Celosia University had good reason to remember him. Few could forget the masked summoner who publicly trounced their professor and introduced students to flying disks called gliders. That made him unpopular with most summoning students, but celebrated among so-called disk-kin. He was on campus less than a minute before the disk-kin were waving at him, throwing gliders in his direction, and asking if he would mark their disks. Unprepared as he was, Taylor ended up imprinting them with his Twilight logo of three poplar leaves inside a circle. Unlike a signature, it was symmetrical and wouldn't unbalance a disk's flight as long as he centered the mark.

Eventually, he broke free of the disk-kin and found the Magical Arts building. At the administration spaces inside, a panicked secretary rushed into the back offices when he saw Taylor coming. He was still gone when Taylor reached his desk and decided to help himself to a chair. For a school of magic, the space seemed too small. Maybe this was where the adjunct professors had their offices, while the full-timers enjoyed more lavish spaces.

The secretary appeared a few minutes later, hiding behind a dark green elf: Rahel. "I only came to make an appointment," claimed Taylor, "there was no need to disturb yourself."

"There was every need. Everything is chaos because of you." In spite of her words, Rahel looked mildly amused. "We'll be in my office," he told the secretary, "no visitors for half an hour."

Rahel's office was more like what Taylor expected: bigger on the inside than the outside, and decked out in academic-shabby decor with the occasional elven-Japanese accent. Rahel didn't fuss with the tea, but poured it already made from a ceramic pot painted to look like a large eyeball, a novelty product sold in the local Arctown.

"I have sixty students in the first-year course because of you. Your summoning wands are a hit. And don't deny that you're responsible. My source of information is impeccable. And I know about the Divine Envoy. That connection was easy to make."

Taylor wondered if one of his spy-boarders belonged to Rahel, or if she was getting her information from the church. It was true that his fellow researchers were making "permutation wands" in several combinations as fast as they could, and were constantly sold out. They looked forward to the day when they could collect passive income on the patents instead of churning out dozens of the same devices.

Taylor accepted the cup of tea. "It gets worse, I'm afraid. The patents and the underlying system will go public soon. It will bring the prices down, which is good, but we're about to have a lot of novice summoners running around with their new wands. I'm sure it will be a headache for you, but soldier on."

"I guessed as much. Have you seen the elven ambassador yet?"

"I just got his card less than an hour ago. So, no."

"Ah! You chose to come here instead. I'm flattered."

"I was looking for my sister. You were an afterthought."

"Very witty," said the elf with a pleasant air. "I like it. Will you be putting on any new shows during your stay?" Perhaps she was thinking about the time Taylor summoned a twelve-foot-tall greater spirit that terrified the student body.

"I haven't planned any. But I've only been in town since this morning."

"So disaster could strike us at any time. Good to know."

"How did you know I was in town? For that matter, how do so many people know?"

"You were seen entering and leaving Dwergbank. Word got around. What brings you to town?"

"If I tell you, who will you repeat it to?"

"The elven ambassador and the principal of the Academy, in that order. The principal will rush to tell the governor, who will have already heard it from the ambassador. The governor will repeat the news to the IEF liaison. Various other parties will hear it along the way, but not from me."

"Then I should only have to say this once. I'm here to sell materials. While that's in progress, I plan to take a few days to relax, see my sister, visit the library, and go fishing. It's a full schedule that does not include fighting anything bigger than a catfish."

"You sound quite free. How would you feel about guest lecturing a summoner class?"

Taylor thought about it. He didn't mind teaching as a rule. But when it came to spirits, there was too much he couldn't say. That, and Rahel probably had experience that added up to some absurd multiple of Taylor's present lifetime.

"Like a fraud," he said at last. "I can't think of anything to teach them that you can't do better."