This whole Jump thing was absolutely amazing. Clark was so happy that Uncle had talked him into applying, because wow, this place was just awesome! He'd already spotted at least seven species of bird that he'd never seen before, the air smelled like fruit and ocean and such wonderful mossy forest, and the air – oh, the air! It was absolutely perfect on his skin. It had all happened so fast, too. He'd heard it usually took years between joining the program and actually setting out on a Jump, but it had been mere months for them and he could hardly be happier.
His fashion options left something to be desired, that was true, but it was worth it! He wasn't going to let the fact that he'd lost his super-snazzy special outfit meant for wowing all the locals and making them swoon as soon as they looked at him get him down any, no indeed!
Their current accommodations were also a bit less grand than he had expected, but it was still all in great fun, but the decorations, with so many colorful and cool alien plants and colorful birds, more than made up for it. It was like camping in a tropical environment, something he hadn't done since he was a little kid.
"So when exactly did you make your fire though, this is important," Oliver was still pestering Jacob.
"Smith," Jacob replied, clearly frustrated, "I don't know any better than the last time you asked me. It was after I found Haleford, but before Ride found us. At least a day ago. Now can you please let me finish eating?"
Oliver desperately looked like he wanted to say something, but instead he just sighed walked away from the older man. Was he still older after a de-age? Normally the answer to that was yes, but it was kinda different when a Jump did it right? They all looked the same age right now, but that had never stopped Grampa from insisting he was still a proper elder.
So sure, they were all the same age as before.
The one sad thing about all this was that he wouldn't be getting a proper bed, from what he'd been hearing. There weren't any mattresses around this campsite, but Clark had really been hoping that whenever all five of them got together again it would be in a village that needed saving, so they could win the hearts and minds of the commoners and get themselves a nice and comfy place to sleep.
It was extra annoying, because he had taken to heart what Uncle had told him, that he needed to be ready for bad mattresses, and had made sure to pick up [Bed of Clouds] as a skill before he'd left, but the System was broken so he couldn't use it. It was unfair.
But Clark refused to let a single small problem get him down. Oh, he supposed the food was also pretty bad. But two small problems wasn't enough to keep Clark Haleford, Interplanetary Explorer down, no it would not!
"What are you doing?" Alyssa asked.
"Posing," he confidently responded. Posture was important for both controlling your own emotions and impressing those around him. And he looked exceptionally dashing with one foot placed upon a rock and his hands on his hips, gazing confidently into the distance.
"You look like a movie character," she told him.
"Why thank you!"
"That… sure. Whatever. Just keep doing you, I guess."
"Healer Haleford, if you would take a moment, we do have two of our team injured, and this will be far better if they were not."
"I would do so most willingly, my fair Commander! However, as the System is broken here, I am incapable of doing so at this time."
Alyssa glared at him, Jacob wasn't paying much attention, Oliver started to move then cut himself off, and Henrietta's powerful stare was fixed upon him unwaveringly.
"What do you mean, the System is broken?"
"Exactly that?" he wasn't sure how this was in question, "It broke as we landed on this planet? So I can't use any skills, because it's broken."
"World, not a planet," Oliver said, but Henrietta shushed him before he could say anything more.
"And how do you know it's broken?" Henrietta asked, and she'd gotten pretty annoyed for some reason that Clark wasn't certain about. Had she not realized?
"Because skills aren't working," he explained. "Watch. [Status]. [Water Cannon]. [Healing Mists]. [Waters of Life]. [Water Spout]. [Hydrokinesis]. See? Nothing."
Oliver had his head buried in his hands, apparently despondent about losing his skills. Maybe he was slow on the uptake? But he didn't blame the guy, mages, even Archmages, had it rough without skills. No practical abilities without the System granting them, so he just found out that he was useless. The rest of them could at least do something without their magic, but when Uncle had talked about the Archmage that would be on his team, Clark had gotten the impression that he was almost useless away from a spellbook, and Clark felt bad for the guy.
Alyssa was staring off into the jungle. What was up with that? He turned to see if she was looking at something behind him, but couldn't spot anything in the dense woodland.
"Haleford… how do you think Warrior Veeran has his sword right now?"
"Well, he's a soldier. A proper soldier will always have their sword, or else they aren't a soldier."
"We're dead," Oliver spoke to the air, realizing just how much trouble he was in. "We're just actually dead, aren't we? Gods take us all."
"Never, good friend! We are humans, and proud subjects under the Blasphemous Emperor himself! There is nothing that can stop us, no monster nor trial which can prevent us from surviving and thriving, returning home as champions and heroes regardless the obstacles in our way!"
"Clark…" Alyssa hesitantly stated, "You do know how to use skills without System assistance, right? Oliver, he should still have skills, right?"
"All classes have at least one fully on-class skill. And most classes give at least one point in Skill as a base. So yes, he has at least one skill," he replied, which just confused Clark a bit. Why did that matter? They understood what it meant for there to be no System, right? It meant no stats at all, no matter what your Class or Level was. Clark would know, he'd lost nearly a hundred stat points!
"And those that don't?"
"Oh, you can still have a single skill even with no points in it, it just functions like it's cross-class, so a pretty steep level penalty, plus it has other issues? You'll often need a focus, too. Especially with a sub-zero skill level? I don't know what [Prince of Shining Streams] starts with, though."
"Of course I know how to use my skills!" Clark interjected, before he could go too long without answering Alyssa's question and the conversation moved on.
"Okay, well the System is still around."
"Well, technically-" Oliver interjected, but Alyssa ignored the interruption.
"And you should have at least one skill. Do you know what it is?" Alyssa asked patiently, like Clark was the one who didn't understand.
"I just used my skills, as you saw, and nothing happened."
"Stop wasting time," Jacob cut in. "Clark. The System is still active. See my sword? That's from [Frostblade]."
The soldier hefted his icy sword, "It lost nearly thirty levels because our Statuses were also reset, but the System is working just fine. The power was within you all along, you never needed the System to aid you, think about it however you want. When you use your skills, is it just by saying their name and telling the System any fiddly details you want?"
"Yes?"
Alyssa and Oliver seemed to be bonding over something, which was good! It seemed like they were somewhat at odds earlier. Clark was happy they were getting along, though he wasn't entirely sure why.
"Okay," Jacob continued. "Do you know how to activate a skill without saying the name out loud?"
"I've done it."
"Can you do it right now?"
"Uhhh…"
"What skill do you expect to have?"
Clark thought about it. "All of them?"
"No. Smith says that you're a [Prince of Shining Streams], what skills are fully on-class for you? Which skills did you have which had no level penalty, the skills you knew which perfectly matched the elements of your class,"
"Water, Light, and Elemental Hero," Oliver added.
"All three elements which the class is comprised of. I assume you had at least one. If you had more than that, which one was your highest level?"
"That would be…" Clark knew that he'd read this. But it hadn't seemed important at the time. After all, if he ever wanted to look at what skills he had, or what level they were, he could just look at his [Status]. That would tell him everything he'd want to know, and plenty of things he didn't care about. But apparently now he was in some situation where his [Status] wouldn't work but apparently his skills might? It was all very confusing, but Clark wanted to try and work with his teammates.
It was a good skill, he knew. He'd been a [Prince of Shining Streams] before, and he'd reclassed into it because it counted as a healer, which is what he needed for this expedition, but also because he knew that he'd be meeting lots of people and he wanted to make a good impression on them, and that Class was really good at making him look perfect…
"[Unblemish]!" He triumphantly remembered.
"[Unblemish]? Is that even a healing skill? Are you an idiot?"
"Ride!" Henrietta snapped at the other woman, "If you're frustrated, that's fine, but don't blatantly insult your teammates."
"So are… nevermind." Alyssa looked chastised.
"Yes, it's a healing skill," he replied undaunted. "It's an excellent healing skill, too! Not only will it wipe away whatever wound you may have suffered, so too will it wipe away the uncleanliness that came with it! No risk of infection, no risk of trapped stuff. And it makes you clean, and it can even work on stains. It is a very fine spell, one of the very best for quick healing!"
"And for non quick healing?" Henrietta asked.
"Why, for that you'd just go to the hospital. Or use a different skill," Clark easily replied. [Unblemish] was for first aid, not extensive medical care.
"Healer Haleford…" Henrietta sounded unusually pained. "You are our hospital."
"Well yes," he said. "I know my job. It's to keep all of you alive, no matter what kind of state the new world may be in."
"And your most probable skill is just for first aid."
"Yes?"
"So what should we do if we need more than first aid?"
"Well then you would… You would…" Clark frowned. "What would you do?"
"Well," Oliver suddenly spoke as he got up from where he'd been sitting, "This has been most interesting. Alyssa, I'll need you at some point for some ward-work. I need to make a new wand first, though."
He vanished into the lean-to, and Clark heard him muttering some spell words shortly thereafter.
Henrietta watched him go, then turned back to the rest of them.
"Veeran. You have experience with this kind of thing, so I want you to get Haleford's skill working. We already need healing, and we need to get him leveling and getting more and better magic as soon as we can."
"Yes, Commander."
"Isn't the whole using-your-class-skill to level thing just a myth? I thought it didn't work like that."
"It's… half a myth. Now Haleford."
"Yes, Commander?"
"Don't feel too bad about your Class choice. Something is better than nothing, and as far as what we need a healer for, first aid is as important as it gets. Nobody does their best work with only one or two level one skills."
Clark nodded, slightly confused, but followed as Jacob pulled him closer to the treeline.
"What's your mana sense?" he asked, then frowned. "You do have a mana sense, right?"
"Sight," Clark replied, "Why would I use anything else? Other than intuition, I suppose."
"I can work with that. How closely did you look at your skills when you used them?"
"Pretty closely. You need to understand what you're doing if you want to level, after all."
"Not the skill effects, the skill itself. Did you ever watch how the mana around you twisted and turned whenever you activated one?"
"Oh. Not that closely? My tutors always said I should focus on my effects."
"I won't cast aspersions on your former teachers. But you know how to cast, right?"
"Yes," Clark replied, biting back a bit of offense. "I am a proper scion of House Haleford, I am capable of casting spells."
With a flick of his wrist and a pulse of his soul, he conjured a basic light centered on his hand, making his palm glow with a soft golden light.
Jacob seemed taken aback, "You can use cantrips but don't know how to activate your skills mentally? That was a cantrip, right?"
"What's a cantrip?" Clark asked. The light was a simple spell, a simple push of his mana while he had a Light class, which could be what a cantrip was, but his tutors had never called it that.
The soldier sat for a moment in thought. "And you never bothered to learn how to use skills without System assistance?"
"Why would I?"
"Many reasons. But this will be a lot simpler than I thought it might. If we're operating under the assumption your skill is [Unblemish], which you claimed functioned as a partial cleaning spell, we'll use it to clean up a spot of dirt, and go from there."
Using a skill, it turned out, was pretty easy. It really was like pushing a bit of mana to dry himself off or to make a small ball of light, just a bit more. It only took Jacob about an hour to teach Clark how to do it, from start to when he could do it pretty reliably. Apparently, it was just [Status] and a lot of higher-level functions broken, and not the entire System, which was a tremendous relief.
Utilizing his [Unblemish] was like wiping away anything, just with a bit 'more' behind it, and it left it pristine in the aftermath. He'd tested it on dirt, some cuts he'd gotten on his legs, even a bit of moss growing upon a nearby rock, and he'd managed to activate it perfectly all three times in a row.
"Thank you most certainly, Warrior Veeran! It has been most marvelous to learn from you."
"You got it?" Alyssa asked, sitting up at attention quite suddenly.
"Hey!" Oliver snapped at her, one hand on her arm and the other flicking through the motions to cast a spell. It wasn't Water or Light or Elemental Hero mana, so Clark couldn't see it directly, but he could definitely see the effects on those elements. He knew how things worked. He also knew not to interrupt anyone while casting, so it made him a bit nervous to know he might have done so accidentally.
"Hold still!" Oliver continued, blind to Clark's thoughts, "If you move like this when I'm actually doing something important it's going to ruin everything."
"Sure, whatever, nerd."
Oliver grumbled, but Clark quickly assessed that it was in good nature and not him genuinely being upset in any particularly serious manner.
"Yes! I am capable of utilizing my vast magical potential to mend all of your problems."
"Great, great. Now can you do your job and heal us? Don't tell Oliver, but I feel kinda bad about hurting his wrist."
"I'm right here?" the Artificer in question asked.
"I'm so guilty I can almost imagine his voice at times. Usually it's just him telling me to shut up, though."
"I am not telling you to shut up! Just hold still for ten seconds. And no… damnit."
The swirling winds of mana around the log tightened into almost a tornado, pulling even Light and Water into its wake, only to suddenly shut off as a tangle of multi-elemental mana burst out of Oliver's hand.
The man sighed, "Well that failed. I'm going to let the Tapestry recover for a bit before I try again, but if there's anything good about the magic here, it's that the Nature should wipe away anything dangerous soon."
"In due time, in due time," he reassured the artificer as he sat down next to Alyssa. With deft hands, he unwrapped the inky bandages covering her upper arm, revealing a chunk of torn-up skin and a lot of dried blood.
"[Unblemish]," Clark said mostly out of habit as he lightly swept his hand across the wound. Mana blossomed beneath his fingers and Alyssa flinched at the touch, but held mostly still.
Clark withdrew his hand, looking at his handiwork. It looked… almost exactly the same.
"What happened there? I am certain that I saw it working."
"I felt something."
"Permit me another attempt."
After the second [Unblemish], Alyssa's shoulder was actually starting to look better! So apparently a level 1 [Unblemish] simply wasn't strong enough to deal with this deep of a wound. That was good to know, very good to know.
It took him another six or seven uses of the skill before Alyssa's shoulder was mostly mended. It left a bit of a scar, but he could probably remove that after [Unblemish] leveled a bit more, and would fade anyway. After that, he moved on to her other wounds, which took much less time overall. Maybe the skill had leveled?
"You're being too optimistic," Alyssa dismissed after he mentioned as much. "I wish leveling was that fast."
"It has never seemed terribly drawn-out to me," Clark shrugged.
"I guess I was expecting you to be tired by now? Have you also noticed your mana regenerating faster here?"
"I am not certain? I have never suffered from poor stamina. Mana. Is it stamina when it's magical?"
Alyssa shrugged, then smiled brightly, "That didn't hurt! Thanks, Clark."
It was a really pretty smile, Clark realized. It was impressive how cheery her smile could be, and he thought it was good that she was happy. Oliver looked a fair bit less happy.
"Well, could I get a turn next?" he asked. "I just put a bit too much pressure on this, so it's nice and hurting again."
Clark gingerly took the offered appendage and swept his fingers across the newly-unwrapped joint. Once again, there was no immediately apparent change, but even after four or five more casts… there was nothing. Well sure, his skin was a bit less red and blistered, but it was obvious that the sprain wasn't going away.
"Why isn't it working?" he wondered aloud. "You do not sense it working on you, no?"
Oliver sighed, "I bet it's because my wound isn't visible. There's no 'blemish' to remove, and the magic feels really surface-level. It's a cleaning skill, isn't it?"
"My apologies, Oliver! Perhaps I can determine some other means of caring for you?" Clark began thinking about the ways to treat a sprain. Ice! Perhaps he could borrow Jacob's sword to cool Oliver's hand. Oh, and he should bandage it... but where would he get a bandage? They didn't have any cloth. Perhaps the ink would function appropriately?
The artificer shook his head before he could puzzle it through, "Don't worry about me, I guess. I'll just take Alyssa back, if you'd let go of my hand, because I still don't know how Wood will interact with my wards, and I want to find out before-"
Clark realized he was still gripping Oliver's hand a bit tighter than he should, and he released it suddenly. He must have been holding onto it more firmly than expected, because as Clark let go, Oliver managed to fall on the ground, sitting with enough force that the wand in his other hand let loose a high-pitched note and billow into green smoke.
"Before that happens," Oliver sighed. "I'll get back to it, I guess, and wait for my hand to heal the old-fashioned way."