Chương 16: Chapter 15: Limited Capacity

Alone in her room, Elizabeth discovered that Crude Light had occupied more than her evening. Mechanistic Replication showed one registered experimental-skill slot, and Crude Light filled it. The underlying observations and models would remain if she later removed the skill, but System-supported activation would not. Without registration, she could still attempt a known reconstruction manually in a controlled setting. In an emergency, the distinction would be substantial. One slot.

She had assumed the class would let her accumulate reconstructed abilities alongside ordinary skills. Instead, Experimentalist preserved knowledge more readily than power. If she wanted another active reconstruction, she would eventually have to choose what stopped being convenient. The restriction annoyed her. It also forced a useful question much earlier than she would have asked it otherwise: what deserved to remain immediately available? For now, Crude Light did.

She spent the four attribute points from her recent advancement without displaying the full sheet. Two went into Spirit, where the strain of sustained mana control remained most obvious. One went into Vitality. The last went into Agility, because Dain had already demonstrated that understanding a correct response after being hit was not equivalent to avoiding the hit. The following week gave Ruby ample opportunity to prove the rest of Elizabeth's assumptions wrong in smaller ways.

"Again," Ruby said. Elizabeth dismissed Crude Light.

"That was the twelfth run."

"And the third at this input."

"We already know the temperature rises faster than brightness."

"We know it happened twice." Ruby smiled pleasantly.

"What do you normally call two convenient results?" Elizabeth looked at her.

"Insufficient replication," she said.

"Wonderful. Again." Elizabeth activated the skill. They repeated only what answered a new question. A prism comparison showed that Ruby's System-granted light produced a broad, smooth visible spectrum with little measurable heating. Crude Light was biased towards the blue end and wasted a substantial fraction of its input as heat. Increasing mana made the glow brighter, but the gain diminished rapidly while the temperature around Elizabeth's hand continued climbing.

"Conversion bottleneck," Ruby said, watching the thermometer.

"Probably."

"Probably?"

"Heat doesn't tell us whether the limit is conversion, containment or both." Ruby pointed at her.

"See? This is why I keep you around." Elizabeth looked up from the notes.

"I thought I was keeping you around." If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"That's adorable." It took Elizabeth a moment to decide whether she'd been insulted. Ruby laughed before she could ask. Crude Light improved through use, but it didn't become a different skill. By Level 4 the same process formed more quickly, flickered less and wasted somewhat less mana. Elizabeth could maintain it while speaking or moving at a walk. It still couldn't detach itself, change colour on command or become a weapon. Ruby approved of that.

"What did you expect?" Elizabeth asked.

"Nothing. You're the one who stared at it as though it had disappointed you personally."

"I was evaluating its limitations."

"You were judging your own light." Elizabeth smiled despite herself. Their work stopped being one-sided. Ruby discovered that Crude Light's defects were useful for her alloy project. Standard laboratory burners produced controlled heat. Proper enchanted lamps were too stable. Elizabeth's reconstruction could expose thin metal strips to a repeatable mixture of mana stress and thermal waste, then vary the input within narrow limits.

"If I can predict which alloys deform first when an enchantment starts failing," Ruby said, adjusting a measuring frame around a darkened strip, "I'll have something worth presenting instead of another table of ideal conditions."

"And if the review goes well?"

"Upper workshop access. Better furnaces. Better stock. More people telling me I'm wasting my time."

"That sounds useful."

"It's the dream." Ruby checked the strip again.

"After Crownspire, I want a workshop with my name over the door. My uncle thinks I should make household enchantments because they sell reliably."

"There's nothing wrong with reliable household enchantments."

"There is if I didn't choose them." Elizabeth understood the answer immediately. The friendship, if that was what Ruby had decided to call it, remained unusually practical. Ruby could refuse an experiment. Elizabeth could keep parts of her System private. Neither condition ended the work. Ruby sometimes arrived with food Elizabeth hadn't asked for; Elizabeth started saving her the useful pages of research instead of only the conclusions.

They argued about controls, teachers and whether the academy tea qualified as a hostile substance. Elizabeth enjoyed the arguments. She didn't need to analyse that every time it happened. Combat Foundations was less enjoyable. A boy with a Rare Spearman class threw her onto the mat before she finished selecting between three responses. The impact drove the air from her lungs. Instructor Dain looked down at her.

"You hesitated again."

"I was choosing." Elizabeth accepted the offered hand and stood. Across the hall, another student raised a brief barrier over one forearm. Someone else reinforced his legs before driving into a padded target. None of the skills was conceptually extraordinary. Every one of them was more useful in a fight than Crude Light. Understanding leverage hadn't given Elizabeth the strength to resist it. Recognising an attack hadn't made her body fast enough to answer.

Even the correct decision became worthless if it arrived after someone else acted. Dain sent her back into position.

"Again. Choose before you know which answer is perfect." Elizabeth disliked the instruction. She also knew he was right. That evening she reviewed Crownspire's approved demonstrations, laboratory inventories and student-access rules. The academy contained more magical expertise than she could study in years. Lack of knowledge wasn't the immediate problem. Access was. Dangerous combat skills were demonstrated sparingly. Rare instruments sat behind course requirements.

Damaged equipment was discarded rather than issued to first-years. Private libraries, guild workshops and independent class-holders existed throughout Aurelia, but Crownspire decided which parts of that world an eleven-year-old student could reach and under what supervision. Her father paid five hundred crowns each month so House White's daughter would never appear to lack anything. Elizabeth had more money than most students and remarkably little authority over where she could spend it.

Crude Light occupied her only active reconstruction slot. If she replaced it, the next mechanism needed to justify that cost. She opened the academy regulations governing student travel. Ruby found her on the same page ten minutes later.

"You're planning something," she said.

"The rules are badly written."

"You've read that paragraph four times."

"That supports my conclusion." Ruby dropped into the chair opposite.

"What do you want in the city?" Elizabeth looked down at the regulations.

"Options." Ruby groaned.

"That answer is somehow worse than 'information'."