People always assume that those with physical builds are somehow incapable of doing desk work, but reality couldn’t be further from the truth. If nothing else, having almost one hundred dexterity basically doubles my speed of thought and finesse, which makes catalyst crafting much easier. Even better, an equal amount in strength makes sitting in one place all day easy, as with twice the physical fitness comes half the soreness and cramps. That, combined with my racial bonus and \Ogre’s Might/ aura catalyst means I have an effective strength of 366, or 466% the fitness I should have with my physical stature.

  Overall I’m well suited to my work in a catalyst shop, poring over tomes older than the building I’m working in and using instruments I’d really rather not know the price of. It would be a relaxing profession, if I knew exactly what I’d done to deserve it.

  See, with my position in society at large as an Ophyf of the Operarius strata, I am very near the bottom of the proverbial ladder in society. I’ll tell you about the exact layering of things later, when it’s more relevant, but for now just know that the job I have is cushy to the extreme for my station.

  This does not, however, stop those above me from flaunting their status. Even if that status is just a little above mine.

  “Does a lowly Ophyf truly think they can swindle me?!”

  I fight to keep a level expression.

  Lowly? I think, mentally berating the large man. He’s not even a full strata above me, just three rungs.

  I surreptitiously look to his right hand.

  No line. I notice, feeling a bit smug. If he had been married, his strata tattoo would have a line below it to indicate such. As that spot on his hand was conspicuously bare, and at his age, I could only assume he wasn’t popular with women. No wonder, as he probably looked down on them for being of a lower rung.

  “I assure you sir, the going rate for an \Empowered Swing/ catalyst like this one is the equivalent of one small life-aspected mark. I assure you the quality speaks for itself, If you’ll allow me to dem-”

  “I don’t care about the quality! All I want is to break rocks a little faster, what's so hard about that?!”

  His voice steadily rises through the sentence, until he’s practically shouting by the end. I tense, knowing what comes next when he balls his fists. Lower rung or no, I’m allowed to defend myself within my strata and he knows it. Problem is, he can’t see my meridians. All he can see is a fourteen year old girl with blue skin, no hair, and-

  “Snaggletooth! Get to the back, Merria will take over the front for you,”

  I relax as I sense Merria, a wide matronly woman with bright green eyes suddenly standing beside me, glaring daggers at the suddenly much less aggressive miner.

  “Coming!” I call as I walk back to Edrius’s workshop as fast as I dare. Merria has a very strict “no running” policy which I wasn’t about to break again.

  As I make my way into Edrius’s personal room, I ask a question I’ve wondered since I got that nickname; “Why Snaggletooth? My real name is shorter, doesn’t make much sense for a nickname”

  “S’wat your mate’s used to call you ain't it? Sounds a bit more intimidating than ‘Alexia’ certainly”

  “My ‘mates’ back then only gave a shit-”

  “Language,” Edrius says sharply, not looking up from his work.

  “Sorry,” I say quickly, “What I meant to say was that the people I ran with only cared about me because I was strong for a ten-year-old”

  Edrius grunted at me in acknowledgment. “Still better than ‘Alexia’ for a girl like you don’t you think? Alexia sounds like a girl I’d happily marry me son off to, if I had one. Snaggletooth seems more accurate seein’ as how you’d sooner bite a boy’s head off than marry ‘im,”

  That was clearly meant in jest, but Edrius didn’t know just how close to the truth he was. If the penalty for killing wasn’t so steep–even for self defence–I probably would have done that very thing. As it was I had to settle for fingers.

  I try to focus on Edrius’s project to distract myself from those unpleasant memories. It looks like he’s reading from a newer diagram detailing a catalyst formation I can only barely comprehend after nearly two years of study. Mostly, anyway.

  “What's that section there supposed to do? It looks like it just crashes two streams of mana together near… the elbow? How does that help anything?”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “It’s the way that it ‘crashes’ that’s the important part, Snaggletooth. See the slight offset of the compressors? Its a variable angle,”

  “What’s that mean?” I ask, not understanding.

  “This skill is meant for someone with a fire-aspected mana pool. The angle controls the intensity of the collision to an extent. See here,” He pulled out a large red shard of Vasulite that was probably worth more than I made in a year.

  He quickly moved a string of mana through the translucent stone, forming a neat sketch of the section. As he manipulates his mana with incredible grace and finesse, my eyes are drawn to his, which are a bright teal as opposed to my drab brown. One shade indicated a high investment into dexterity and intelligence from a person above level 15, the other indicated a relatively equal amount invested in all three stats from someone yet to break that barrier. This thought prompted me to bring up my status menu, not for the first time that day. It was one of the first thing you learned to do, right after you learned to form full sentences.

  Once more I glared at the infuriating “See journal for level up conditions!”

  As always, there were no level up conditions waiting for me in my journal that could bring me past that unbreakable barrier. Just one quest with a goal as ambiguous as it was infuriating:

  Everyone I knew had this quest, and no one had completed it that I knew of.

  I snapped back to the present when I heard Edrius make a satisfied grunt as he finished his basic etching and turned to me, pseudo-catalyst in hand.

  “See the two compressors here?” He pointed to two identical cone looking formations in the translucent red crystal, arranged opposite each other. Not waiting for my answer, he moves on gesturing as he talked.

  “These ya know of, but to reiterate they compress mana like a liquid and shoot it out in a thin stream. Can you tell me what they’re used for most of the time?”

  “Venting of mana from the catalyst through a breathway, usually as a safety measure when the user uses a more dangerous mana type that can’t stay in their body for an extended period.”

  “Such as?” Edrius askes, clearly testing me.

  “From most dangerous to least dangerous by volume, the order is void, fire, lightning, earth, resonant, wind, space, life, and unaspected mana,” I recite. “Not counting unique affinities and mana compounds, while acknowledging that keeping void mana in your body for any length of time is suicidal at best,”

  “Very good.” Edrius said, and I allowed myself to feel a small glow of pride for remembering to include unaspected mana this time.

  “Before I explain exactly what this little combination does, do ya happen to also remember why ‘more’ and ‘increased’ are different in the eyes of the meridian system?”

  I furrowed my brows at that, not just because of the question, but because Edrius was doing that thing he sometimes did where his accent slowly got less rural and more… academic, for lack of a better word. It made him harder to understand.

  “Um…” I said, very intelligently, “‘more’ is better than ‘increased’ right? Given the choice?”

  Edrius nodded, gesturing for me to elaborate.

  “I think… okay so if you have two bonuses that both say that they give a 100% increase to something, you end up with a total bonus of 300%. But if you have two that say the give 100% more of something, the final bonus would be 400%, right?”

  “That is indeed,” Edrius says with a slight smile, “one of the examples they give in the book I lent you to read. Was it not explained properly?”

  “No, that's not it, it's just that… I guess I can’t really grasp the concept. Like, it’s 100% twice both times, so why isn’t the answer just the same? It doesn’t make sense to me,”

  “Yes, math can be very confusing sometimes. Let’s see if I can't explain it better than that dusty old tome can. So let's say you’ve got… two really nasty Bellicus who you owe a debt to and they each say you owe them a small fire mark each. But the catch is, the debt gets bigger every day,”

  “Sounds normal so far,” I say, nodding.

  “One Bellicus says, ‘your debt to me will increase by the original amount every day until you pay up’ and the other says, ‘your debt to me will double every day until you pay it off,’ What happens after the first day?”

  “The debt for both goes up by one small fire,” I say easily.

  “And the second?” He asks.

  I frown in thought for a second. “The first debt goes up by one small fire again, but the other goes up by two,”

  “Correct,” Edrius says. “And how’d you get that answer?”

  “Well for the first one, I just added on the original amount again, like the Bellicus said, and for the other, I took the whole amount and doubled it instead,”

  Edrius snaps his fingers. “Yes! Exactly. It all depends on where you start. ‘Increases’ starts with the original amount and adds a portion of that to the total. ‘More’ starts with the whole amount, after other calculations have already happened,”

  “I think I get it,” I say, my eyes widening in comprehension.

  “Good,” Edrius says, “Because we’re burning sunlight. To make a long explanation short, this little miracle is one of the ways we’ve got to give catalyst descriptions that coveted ‘more’ keyword,”