Hours 41 - 43: All Crows go to Haven

Who am I kidding? I'm not ready to cease my wanderings yet. I'm just getting started with the altar of spell-making! I also spend a while doing some research online about the 'best' way of increasing skills. I have it in mind that I want to be able to jump high - and I don't want to wait for the Boots of Spring Heel Jak either. I'll need a high Acrobatics level. I 'cheat' a bit and follow some instructions which basically say that if you can find somewhere to stand where your head almost touches the ceiling, you can repeatedly press jump and each jump will only last a split second, but you'll still get a 'point' for each one. As recommended, I stand on a book-case in the Chorrol Mages Guild, and it works very well. In what seems about fifteen minutes I level up my Acrobatics about 12 times. It could have been less than that, I'm not sure - but it got very boring of course and I stopped when my Acrobatics reached level 60.

What about just straight-up 'fortifying' my Acrobatics? I have a Fortify Attribute spell option, but not Fortify Skill. I look it up and it turns out I have to do the Gray Prince's quest to unlock this. So off I head to Crowhaven. The dungeon's a walkover and even the Vampire at the end falls to just one spell. The Gray Prince isn't happy with what I discover, but he trains me as thanks for helping him, and I unlock Fortify Skill. Via some fiddling around at the altar of spell-making, I create two spells which can run simultaneously and push my Acrobatics to the mid 130's, for 20 seconds. I'm pleased with the result - I really can jump incredibly high - not enough to jump clean over a building, but easily high enough to jump over people and some walls. One interesting perk is that because my Acrobatics is so artificially high, I can 'walk' on water (I can jump on it as if it's land). I mess around on water for a bit and then notice that from time to time, if I jump of the water but land on land, I'll stay stuck floating in the air like this:

From this position, I can 'float' above the ground and hover wherever I want, until I either pass over water again, or bump into higher ground, at which point I drop back to earth.

I also create several 'Drain Skill on Self' spells for various skills which I may wish to have training in. I cast 'Drain Restoration  95' on myself, then get an extra 5 levels of training from a woman in Cheydinal for a grand total of about 150 gold. Not bad! I level up, then do the same with Acrobatics, as there also happens to be an Acrobatics trainer nearby. I've been casting a lot of low-level spells whilst wandering about too, which has caused my Illusion and Conjuration skills to skyrocket. Due to all these shenanigans, I reach level 15:

I think it's peculiar how it states that 'there's no one stronger in Tamriel'. Really? At level 15? This is supposed to be your peak? I would have thought you're still supposed to be relatively fresh-faced at this stage. My character certainly feels it.

I've frittered away at least three hours - possibly more, I lost track of the time - fiddling around with various spell configurations and whatnot. Creating all these spells has drained my coffers and I only have a couple of thousand gold left. I'm also getting tired, and wary, of 'fiddling the numbers' on my skills and stats. That's it then, time to take on some more missions at last!