Spike of All Trades

by Ariamaki

Chapter 70: Dark Dreaming

The time after dinner (and the many Kitchen tests that came with it) and 'bedtime' found Spike composing a letter to Luna again: This one was on a bit of a weirder topic, he had to admit. She'd only just shown him the art of using his meditative headspace as a dream world, and already he was planning to step into dangerous territory with it... Which is exactly why he was asking for advice before he risked it.

Dear Princess Luna,

Sorry to bug you again so soon after the last letter, but I had a particularly... Silly isn't the right word. Is there a phrase for when a question is silly but also serious, like it's an arbitrary thing to ask about a concerning topic? Whatever.

I'm wondering if it's safe to fight in my dreams. Like, either if I were to become lucid during a nightmare or if I decided to use the things you showed me to start a fight with... I guess it would be a figment of my imagination? Or would I be pulling something out of the Dreaming with the magic involved? You mentioned the fact that power draws attention, and given the things the Elements have had to deal with in terms of 'attention' over the last few years... I'd rather learn how to fight for my own sake, in a lot of different environments, rather than risk it in the moment. You know?

Hope all is well in the Dreams, and thank the Tantabus again for letting us have time to chat the other night.

Your concerned nephew, fellow gamer, and The Gamer,
Spike

His response arrived before he even finished helping Twilight paste new sorting numbers onto the latest arrivals for the Library.

"Oh hey Twilight, want to see one of my new tricks?"

She raised an eyebrow at his phrasing but nodded, and he pulled a scroll out of his Inventory.
"Mail for us!"

"...You don't have to spit them up anymore?"

"I don't even have to flame them anymore, or write them by claw! I can dictate the whole thing through my Inventory and it'll subtract it from the ink and paper I've got in stock. It also deposits any incoming stuff right into the Mail system, and I can pull it out whenever."

Her smile at that reveal was genuine and kind of surprising. He thought it was pretty cool, but it seemed like Twilight felt it was a bigger deal... Which made sense when she spoke.
"That is a huge relief. As much as it made things expedient and convenient, I've always felt sort of bad... Especially when you got a big set of letters back and forth, I could tell you weren't exactly feeling great afterwards."

"Eeeeh, yeah... But at the same time, maybe I needed all that grinding to get my skill to such a good spot already? Just think of it as training I was doing by accident!"

"Hehehe... Oh Spike."

She returned to stickering books and he went back to his newly-arrived letter: The crisp blue and silver wax gave way under one claw, and he popped it open to read the... really short response.

Dear pseudo-apprentice Dreamshaper Spike,

Yes, engaging in the arts of war should be perfectly reasonable. Many ponies, myself included, have performed very similar acts of visualized training... The inclusion of Dreamstuff, magic, and your unique abilities may certainly induce complications of course. But knowing your relation to Twilight Sparkle? I would rather not spoil the surprise. There's little point in testing somepony if you tell them all the answers in advance, as I am sure my sister has said before.

Your familial not-quite-teacher,
Luna

Alright. OK. That was exactly the right level of reassuring that meant he'd give it a shot. Tonight would be about laying the groundwork, and tomorrow he'd start testing out actual combat scenarios.

For tonight... He would dream.

When their work was finished he went out onto the balcony at the top of the Library. He sat down and curled his legs beneath him, laid his claws down with his palms facing the sky. In one he held a sphere of fire made with Stagnet, and in the other the largest gem in his collection: A colony of them, to be more accurate. A massive craggled geode filled from edge to edge with dense spikes of amethyst. Purple and green... And between his feet, on the balcony, was the little piece of strange unbreakable metal Rarity had given him.

Spike walked down one step at a time, taking it more slowly than the nights prior. He followed each piece of the process as his body and mind aligned. Deliberately, he pulled his perception inwards and disconnected himself from the world at large. There was only a single person, a dragon writ both large and small onto this little wooden space. In his mind he traced a path from the fire to the gem to the metal and back, and every other direction and combination. He carved triangular veins into the air, following the path of pink and gold and purple and green.

His throat hummed with the song to slow down time, or at least how he perceived it. His view of the world narrowed even further, until eventually his senses dimmed entirely. Yet he still felt that triune formation burning in his hands, bright and distant. It wasn't with his senses but with something greater that he felt it. If this was how Luna felt whenever she prepared to shape the dreams of pony-kind... Well, he could see the appeal.

The blood-red cave sprang up around him again, and he made himself appear within it. Faint and sourceless light covered everything, and he took in his surroundings before obliterating the cave, and then his self-image. A new cave, a new self. Then a third. Fourth, fifth, sixth, seventeenth... He repeated until every detail was perfect in his head. Once he achieved that he began to expand, shaping the walls of the cave. He created lights, and a chair. A table to work on, and mental projections of the things he wished to work.

Spike didn't have a perfect knowledge of physics or fluid dynamics or any of the fundamental laws that Twilight studied so voraciously. What he did have was a fantastic tactile sense and a perfect memory, so he bent those into tools and used them to shape the Dream. Then within his dream he shaped other things, worked cloth and wood and stone until he could figure out the perfect method to use in the waking world. Tomorrow he would start trying to teach himself to fight, but tonight?

Tonight he dreamed, and he created.

- - - - - - - - -

By the time that morning came he was incredibly confident in his ability to shape the dream with the spell Luna taught him. That confidence was borne out by the messages he recorded to his Notes upon 'waking' from the meditative trance.

I have acquired a skill for [Gathering] materials!
I have achieved Level 25 Crafting through practice in the dream!
I have gained a character Level! :D
I have the majority of the Mastery for the Creative Kitchen!

You have acquired a Low [Dream Affinity]
You may access the Affinity System!

His latest Level came with little fanfare at the time, since he earned it entirely through the Dreaming: Crafting experience apparently counted even when he was making plans and blueprints for future use... Which also merited a spot in his Notes, come to think of it.

I have drafted the blueprint for a [Crusading Kit] and its components!
I have drafted the blueprint for a [Crafting Table] and its components!

Making his own tools had a certain appeal, and he could use the Dragon's Scales to make tools whenever he wanted... But there was something satisfying about getting some real proper stuff to work with, and he had quite a few Bits thanks to his previous quests. That would have to wait until after the weekend, but now he had a better idea of what to get and how to use it.

Gathering was a bit of a weird skill, and he'd need tools for that too: Chipping ore out of rocks with his bare claws was neat, but he'd heard from Zecora and Twilight alike that certain plants needed to be treated in very particular ways to keep their best properties. The skill itself had the same kind of sparse generic description as Crafting and Cooking, but notably it was broken down into many branches... Maybe if he started really learning foreign styles of cooking he could get those too? It was probably the same with Crafting, actually.

Spike decided it would be best to refer to those as 'Specializations', since they weren't distinct subskills with their own descriptions (and they didn't count for his Story Arc), but they did have their own levels and progress. The top-level umbrella skill seemed like it was a fallback and a minimum for situations where he was lacking in a specific Specialization, and it gained experience whenever he made progress in them. Last night's dream-world gains had been mostly Sewing, Woodwork, and Joinery from within Crafting. His trip through the woods had been mostly Mining, Stonecraft, Woodcutting and so on.

But apart from all of those long-term goals and his newest level-up, the biggest gain from last night was definitely the Affinity. The menu was... less helpful than he had hoped, to be honest. It mostly just listed each of the Affinities he had, along with a little more information. Apparently they had a direct impact on using magic of that 'type', and all related Gamer skills, as well as his ability to resist and deal damage with those things. The problem is he'd mostly figured all of that out from skill descriptions and basic inference.

The new information from the menu was that his Affinities had levels. Or maybe tiers? Intensities? Whatever! The point is that they were scaled (heh) in some way, measured with relative ranks. Currently his actual list looked like this...

HIGH Earth Affinity
HIGH Fire Affinity
Metal Affinity
LOW Dream Affinity

Metal having no prefix was extremely useful information despite appearances: It meant there was some kind of generic middle baseline, a medium value with no title. Going off of his current sample size, it was likely that these were the only three states an Affinity could have: He'd just gotten Dream after all, and it was already Low. That made it seem unlikely for there to be a Very Low. Likewise, dragons were intimately connected to Earth and Fire so it made sense if High was the max. That left the unmarked middle for his Metal Affinity, which was tied to Earth but not quite as natural or strong. So it was Low, an unlabelled Middle, and High! Simple and clean.

On top of all that? He'd made progress in his dream-based cooking, and he could feel it: He was extremely close to finishing the Creative Kitchen's Mastery bar, so close that it was no longer showing a value. The percentage was gone and the relative progress bar was solid blue. Maybe he needed time to absorb and collate the information? Or possibly his system was working on integrating the skill... Maybe it would just take one real-world practice recipe to finish the job.

He wouldn't be able to spend time testing before or after breakfast today: Twilight had business around town in Ponyville, so he was manning the library solo until well after lunch. And if she was busy in town she'd almost certainly be getting herself food at Hayburgs, so he didn't want to waste a lot of effort making this big groundbreaking dish without her. It would sadly have to wait until dinner. But that didn't mean he was going to waste his time! Spike's new skills all had a multitude of purposes, and he was sure he could do the work the Library demanded with new panache.

...man he totally had to remember to make ganache at some point. Maybe get Pinkie to teach him a good pastry recipe to pair it up with? Yeah, yeah. Nice. Into the Notes it went!

I have to make some ganache.

Comments

[ArcaneTech]

For once I'm early!
This chapter was very interesting. Looks like he can grind even in his sleep! That'll help immensely with his deadline, as even when he can't fit grinding into a regular day, he can do it at night.

[Herald of Opera]

Joinery

This was a word I had to Google. The things you learn reading pony...

[Black--Soul]

I wonder if that counts towards Lunas training for the benediction.

Good chapter.

I wonder when he starts dedicated training ... 1 Year isnt that long for all his objectives!

[Booster Spice]

This is getting a really serious build base for all sorts of advances. Raising Dream crafting to such levels, given his dictating mail within inventory with inventory materials, he can be looking forward to dream crafting with real materials, then placing teh finished product in Inventory to either be removed for the smaller items, or messaged out for larger items? I wonder what his current limit is, and the thoughts and training required for rate of improvement, what sizes, mass etc?

Being able to message a large boulder to inventory would greatly expand time available to craft with it through dilation etc?

Is Spike still Observing that Impossible metal every few levels if that, to see if theres any plottable variation in information available?

Making a ganache with panache in real food, serving and consuming, with integration give the XP in several ways, if it is the trigger to unlock the mastery, level up, is itself a measureable effect for Gamer enviroment? Still he has yet to discover or utelise the True Sleep method or requirement, which I have seen in at least one game engine, it was possible to effectively go through the whole game, racking up multipliers, in a single day, and the game day only incremented when the character went to sleep in the bed. Only the multipliers were applied when the character woke up, after the full nights rest. Very confusing at first when Day 1, even after all the grind, youre making P10 for a sandwhich or so, and when you wake up, youre making the same sandwhich worth P10,000 or something OTP like that.

Tonight he gets Crafting Mastery, Tomorrow night he builds the CMC Assault Course, extra on the Assault? As in starting with full live fire then ramping up through Daring Do recreations trap runs etc, given Lethals are a lot harder to do with a dragon that can burn, melt, eat and claw his way through them?

[falconstrings]

my mind animated the last scene for a bit and it was just spike staring into his screen then writing the last sentence down, i found it funny and thought i'd share it.
also great chapter

[Cauchemar]

So I feel like maybe the reason spike isn't getting his kitchen thing done is because he's still missing a bit.

Like meat or a meat substitute. Fish or Tofu or something.

[Black--Soul]

Dream training. He could ace his goals in his sleep

I guess he never waste time again sleeping

I wonder if Spike ever rides on Lunas back to glorious battle!