"First, artistic skills are for different things. Either, just for regular appreciation, or to cause some kind of effect in another person. Like looking at a painting that a great artist made will give you some small stat or regeneration bonuses. Listening to a certain song, will strengthen you in a specific way. And then, there are skills that have other effects as well, such as directly charming enemies, or somehow managing to hide in any situation. The last one is something learned through Acting, by the way." Evalia explained with a smile as she curiously listened to the song that Stahl was playing, while Stahl himself in turn curiously listened to what Evalia was saying, even immediately waving away the notification that appeared to tell him that he learned the Guitar-Playing Skill.
"Alright, so art skills are support skills then, I guess?" He asked, and Evalia immediately nodded her head. "Basically. At the very least, it should be pretty hard to survive a fight with just art skills, although depending on what you do, you can, as mentioned, temporarily charm monsters and have them fight for you." Evalia told the young man, who kept listening curiously.
"So for now, we're going to have you learn skills that are relatively easy to learn just like this. As in instruments, painting, singing, dancing, and so on. But a skill like acting is something that we'll wait for until we get to town." She explained, so Stahl once more nodded in response.
"Got it. But why exactly is that?" He asked with a wry smile, and Evalia just chuckled. "Well, acting is easier to level up the more you convincec another person. And here, everyone knows who you are exactly, so having you go around and act a certain way different to usual might be a teeny tiny bit awkward. So, when we get to the next town, with different prompts for your personality that I'm going to give you, I'll tell you who to talk to for what reason, and you go for it."
"Huh, that makes sense… Yeah, trying to act in front of everyone here might be a bit awkward, as you said…" Stahl responded to the young artist and nodded his head, before remembering something else, "Oh, and you mentioned Photography, right? How do we do that?"
With a grin, Evalia just leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms in response to that question. "Eisen made some 'Camera bots', as he called them. If we take those and command them to save certain things in their memory, it counts as photography."
"Oh really? Nice, I didn't know that." Stahl said curiously, and Evalia chuckled with a smile. "Yeah, I didn't know either, and then I suddenly got the skill." She explained, and Stahl continued playing rather nervously, as he wasn't aware that there were that many different skills.
And he was also nervous, because he was pretty sure that the other 'Originals' would act in a similar way. Including his grandfather, who would maybe even get him to learn even more crafting skills when he got out of the hospital.
Either way, for a little while longer, Stahl simply continued playing the guitar until his skill ranked up to one. And then, he was given a flute, which he was swiftly instructed on how to play, before having to play it for an hour. After that followed a drum, and then even a musical keyboard, although it was just rather simply constructed.
And after about three hours, Stahl was finally done with the instruments, but just when he wanted to take a break, Evalia just brightly smiled at him. "And now we're moving onto singing!" She exclaimed, before Stahl slowly nodded his head and nervously did as instructed. He was rather nervous about singing in front of Evalia, but luckily, she was just giving him basic singing lessons, where he had to hold a tone for a long time or copy a certain tone with his voice. So it wasn't actually as embarrassing, and rather fun to do in the end!
And after that, they moved onto dancing, where it then again turned a bit embarrassing. Of course dancing in simple, pre-shown movements was also a way to level the skill up, but the easiest way seemed to be to actually dance with another person. So, Stahl and Evalia did just that. Stahl knew how to dance a little bit, but only to the extent of not utterly embarrassing himself at Prom. On the other hand, Evalia was practically as good at controlling her body as those meditating monks Stahl once read about, who were able to do crazy things with their bodies.
So, it became a bit awkward when Stahl couldn't really keep up at all, and he simply ended up reaching Rank 1 in dancing through repeated stumbling and stepping on a cute girl's toes.
"Okay, after you literally cost me a good portion of HP, we're moving onto drawing. It's getting pretty late, though, so that should be the last thing we'll do today. Tomorrow, we'll work on Scribing, Sculpting, and then Photography." Evalia explained with a smile, and Stahl swiftly nodded his head.
"Gotcha. Alright, what do I need to start with then?" Stahl asked, and Evalia just shrugged. "It's art. Just paint whatever you want. Different focuses give different amounts of proficiency, depending on how well you actually fulfill the goal of that focus. You already have the drawing skill, so you just need to make a few big, kinda complex drawings, or a bunch of small, simple drawings to get it to Rank 1." She explained with a light smile, before Stahl nodded his head and looked at the canvas that Evalia handed to him.
"What to draw then…?" The young man quietly muttered to himself before thinking about it closely, and then remembering the small Mana Model that he had worked on in the morning, choosing to just take it as a reference. Slowly, he created the model with his mana again after it had been saved in his Mana Modeling skill, and then began to paint what he saw. In the end, it really didn't look too shabby. But 'too shabby' also means that it wasn't necessarily great, which it by no possible means was.
It was just average, something that would most likely get a 'B' in art class. And Stahl was fine with that, it was much better than the Dagger he attempted making before as his first try at Blacksmithing. But that wasn't the last painting that he would be making throughout the rest of the day, and he slowly began to understand why Evalia said that this would be the last thing they would do today.
The other skills gained proficiency rather steadily, because they were 'Action-Based' skills that could be performed semi-constantly and gained a steady amount of proficiency, but a skill like drawing was 'Item-Based', meaning that Stahl was gaining only a little bit of proficiency during the action, and the most amount after actually finishing an item. So, it would take a good bit longer to rank these skills up than Stahl had expected at first. But even then, he didn't mind. Because it was fun to paint.
---
After finally ranking his Drawing skill up to 1, Benji logged off and swiftly stepped out of the capsule, so that he could face reality again. The tough reality, in which Benjamin was in the hospital, while Benji was having fun hanging out with everyone in the game.
And Immediately after stepping out of the capsule, Benji got dressed and put on his shoes, before stepping out to the livingroom, where his father was already waiting. It was still pretty awkward between them, but at this point they at the very least managed to talk the most important things out, and Benji finally understood what an asshole he was being.
Of course, in Benji's mind his anger was quite justified, because his father who kept on preaching about always doing the right thing and never hurting anyone or breaking the law ended up being a former criminal. It was just that his reaction was utterly disgusting. Calling his father names, insulting him, and even just running away from what was going on was something that Benji wasn't proud of. At all.
But it happened, so he couldn't hide from it. Although that mentality was part of why Benji got so mad, as his father always taught him to own up to their mistakes. And at least now, Tony was trying to do that. A little late in Benji's opinion, but better now than never.
"So… When are we going to the hospital?" Benji asked somewhat awkwardly, and Tony slowly scratched the back of his neck as he properly sat up, looking at his son with a sorry expression. "We're not…" He answered, and Benji immediately looked at him with a frown.
"What do you mean, we're not going to see him?" The young man asked, once more slightly getting angry at his father, before the latter answered. "Your grandfather asked us not to come visit him. At least not right now. To start it off with, today he's not going to be in once single place anyway, because they're running all kinds of tests on him to see how they can best fix what's going on with his arm. Maybe tomorrow we can go see him, but for today, let's let him just relax the little time he has to do that." Tony explained, so Benji slowly nodded his head and sighed.
"I guess…" He answered, slightly looking at the ground with a somewhat sad expression, before Tony spoke up. "Don't worry, he's coming back Thursday anyway. It's not like your grandfather is dying." He said with a smile, trying to reassure his oldest son, although he rather did the opposite.
He scared his youngest daughter. "W-¬What do you mean, grampa is dying?!" She asked with tears in her eyes. "First, Sean tells me I have an icky skeleton in me, and now grampa is dying?!" Katy asked as tears began to flow down her cheeks, and Tony immediately jumped up from the couch and sprinted over to her, trying to calm her down by explaining that he was saying the opposite, which was that Benjamin wasn't dying at all, and that he would return in top health in a few days.
"Really? Grampa is going to be fine..?" Katy asked with a quiet sniffle, and Tony nodded his head as he continued to comfort his daughter, running his hand over hear head slowly. "Of course he is, don't worry." He answered, and in the meantime, Benji was explaining the situation to Sophia, telling her that Benjamin asked that they wouldn't visit him today.
"Oh… Are you sure we should listen to him? Shouldn't we at least go see him for a few minutes?" She asked, but Benji just shrugged. "I think so too, but if Dad and Grampa say so, then I guess we shouldn't… Erm, want to go out for a run with me?" The young man asked, and Sophia looked at him in surprise. "Run? You?"
"What's that supposed to mean? You know what, nevermind that, I don't want to hear the answer to that… Yes, I obviously run, I got part of my scholarship for College is an athletic scholarship after all. I've just been lazing around all the time the past few days and stuffing my face, so I really need to get to it. And it's a good way to distract myself right now. And since I'll just be sitting in the capsule all-"
"Fine, fine, I get it… Don't need to hear your life story… I'll just change real quick, then we can go, I guess. I can finally wear something normal for sport, and not just sweatpants and sweatshirts…" Sophia added as she quietly yawned and made her way back to her room, while Benji did the same to get dressed in a more proper outfit for running as well.
And then, the two cousins went and worked out together.