Entry 20 Pg. 616, New Day 5

The factory is going along well, with the line of production creating a truly staggering amount of the self-healing plates. With the line creating around 12 1 m-long hexagonal plates every 30 seconds over the past couple of days, I have been swimming in them. Currently, they are being stored in a shed until they are implemented.

Because apparently the gods were laughing at me during the design as always. For the self healing enchantment removes any attached metal quite violently. It works alright if I activate the enchantment after altering it, but that does nothing for the dozens of plates that I enchanted before I realized this. Well, better later than never. It’s been around 5 days, and I’ve made enough plates for an entire mansion, so I shouldn't quibble about a couple dozen of them.

In other news, I finally have a stable measurement of time again. I made essentially an hourglass that flips itself; the measure of time is arbitrary because, well, it’s not like I have anything to measure it against. But not swimming in a void of endless time like I’m stuck in an alien casino is, frankly, amazing. For the actual clock, all it took was a proximity-based enchantment that pushed the water to the top whenever the rune got within 1j of metal. I’m still not sure what a j is, but so far it really hasn’t been a problem, so I’m going to ignore it.

In other news, so far, in terms of improvements, I’ve mostly been adding enchantments to the steam engines. They are a really big sticking point and labor sink. By now I’ve made some systems so that they don’t require so much assistance anymore, like inscribing the floor beneath their tankards with a hot hands enchantment.

And man, was that enchantment a pain in the ass. I didn’t really notice it due to the impending doom, but forcing a rune into existence is a whole lot of work and prone to random roadblocks. I just pushed past the pain because, well, dying is a whole lot worse. But at the very least I have a second datapoint for custom runes being possible. Even if they are very difficult, it does give me some hope that if my studies were to fail, I might be able to build my way to the other side via enchantments. So far, my plan is to essentially first have a place to live before I start the long endeavor of building a whole ass portal, where there will presumably be many hurdles in between success.

I’ve also created a second assembly line, doubling the production level of before, and the entire thing was created with great speed due to the lack of R&D. But the main thing in the way of making it was the steam engines again. It's due mainly to the fact that they aren’t easily mass produced; they aren’t just one mold; it’s a shitload of gears, a complicated tankard, and an annoying enchantment placed on the inside for a continuous stream of water.

Considering the difficulty of making steam engines quickly and the sheer usefulness of the machines, a good idea might be to make another assembly line for steam engines. But I should think about that for a bit longer; no need to be hasty.

Tara Out.

Entry 21 Page 636, New Day 9

Plans for expanding the factory have been postponed for one stupid ass reaason, the factory fucking fell apart! It was fine at first, with only a few pieces going haywire, but around 2 days ago the vast majority of the enchantments just stopped working and the entire floor ground to a halt. I've been up for 2 goddamn days fixing and replacing everything.

Whats the point of a factory that does your manual labor for you if it’s a little baby that constantly cries and needs fixing! Hell, I would prefer the babies; at the very least, I actually know how to take care of those no human has done system repairs for decades. That’s an AI’s job; a human hasn’t had to so much as glance at a blueprint in a generation. And it’’s not exactly like I have any blueprints anyway; I made the steam engines by binge-watching DIY videos, searching up articles, and looking through patent archives.

Either way, I had to replace all the enchantments in the factory, ripping up the floor, melting off plates, and disassembling machines. I didn’t exactly place the enchantments in ordinary places, so they were everywhere. I had to crawl through four different tankards to scratch off the old enchantments I placed on the inside. One very small silver lining is that I have been forced to make my enchantments modular, considering the fact that they run out of juice. Thus giving me the ability to slowly make them better over time. Although, despite the benefits, I wish that I never had to fix it. It’s not like I didn’t already know that enchantments have to be recharged. I lived through countless people, and more than a few placed in their artwork the shaman and the ceremony of replenishment every 10 days.

So for now, any additions to the factory are postponed as I investigate the way to recharge the runes. It’s a pain in the ass to recreate them, so much so that I might need another assembly line stamping out modular enchantments. But I do have access to the brats items in the cache I attached to the old base with ropes. So the next item on the agenda is taking a look at the bracelet integral to the ceremony, both due to the obvious fact that it could solve imediately my current problem. And the fact that it formerly had the ability to transfer someone back and forth from the atral, and mortal plane's.

Tara out.

Entry 22 Pg.676, New Day 13

I write this with gloom in my shoulders and bags under my eyes heavy enough to hold my sewing supplies. I’ve been trying to replicate—or, hell, even understand—the bracelet for several days, and frankly, I give up. I don’t know why I didn’t try earlier, considering that it’s literally a teleportation device that might be able to take me home, maybe a grim prediction of the future, but it has been a disaster.

Because frankly, as I painstakingly translated, I found that somehow the First Shaman formatted the enchantment into a poem. The lines connect the strands of metal in one cohesive flow, intersecting in the braided bands. Which is frankly baffling considering that runes are practically caveman speech that only says concepts and useful words for enchantments with not many flowery descriptors. But he managed to use the brusqueness of the words not as a disadvantage but as an advantage. Trailing off into the distance, saying profound things, or, well, I assume profound things.

Because practically a third of the runes are gibberish! And the most important parts as well. See the poem from what I have so far translated is essentially a piece about his desire to make the world a better place than he found it. And none of the words I can recognize have anything to do with teleportation, or transportation. I'm even unsure as to how in the nine hells this does anything other than explode the wrist off of whoever dares to wear it.

Because although runes are a very powerful and varied tool they also need a couple of iterations before they don’t explode into pieces, or randomly melt something in the vicinity. And with no idea how the hell the First Shaman made an enchantment out of a poem nothing but despair has come out of trying to replicate it.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

Hells, I’m pretty damn sure that even if I could perfectly copy down what the poem says, it wouldn’t work because, at the end of the day, it isn’t mine. My attempts at scrying have proved fruitless as well. Letting me only hear the quiet thrum of the First Shaman's will to improve the world to make of the world something grand when all he walked in on was chaos and his undying hope that someone else will take up that challenge as well.

Ugh, despite his dickweedish nature, you have to admire the underlying will and genius behind the destroyer of the temple. I just wish I could do as I did when I was in high school, and just copy and paste this shit.

But frankly, I would find it improbable that in such a dynamic system of magic, no one would fix such a huge problem as the need to replace your enchantments weekly. That means, that I could create a recharge enchantment. My plan is to look through the book for pieces of the puzzle due to the unlikely idea of no such vocabulary for a recharge enchant being there.

Tara out!

Entry 23 Pg.683, New Day 21

I come back to sadly yet another failure. I have managed to find no runes that I could believe have a use in a meta enchantment. I have managed to find some success in increasing the efficiency of enchantments by adding buttons so that the enchantments do not run full time even when I am asleep and unable to monitor them.

Because sadly, despite the convenience, the factory is still a little baby that requires constant upkeep and monitoring so that it doesn’t turn into a blazing fire. I have, however, made enough steel plates to start on my plans. But without a way to either massively increase the stockpile of magic in them, which I have not found, or recharge them, they are basically no better than regular plates of iron. A material that is flat out worse than the steel I have access to, and it’s not exactly like I can use buttons for efficiency.

What am I supposed to do, see the future so that I can see attacks before they happen? The entire point of an indestructible base that heals so fast that it slaps away all its threats is so that you don’t have to stay awake far past when you should be biting your nails in fear.

But I do have a plan based on one pretty simple thing. The simple fact that the object of my frustration is a living being that I can argue with, and thus one that I can steamroll in order to get what I want as I always do.

—

"You are alive, aren’t you?" I say to the book, my fingers trawling along the cover, embossed with the 8 true names of the people who have owned it.

For if it can hide something supposedly for my own good until I have found my own stylehides, that means that it can somehow monitor me. And with the fact that I saw the masks of the 7 previous shamans, that book is people. And one thing I’m good at is dealing with people, especially when I already know what buttons to press.

The book does nothing, but I’m not exactly going to stop here, especially with how insane I must seem to be talking to a gods damned book. So I flip to the very last page, and look at its insane, mind-bending geometry, a personal retelling of history from 7 different pens, history written down dutifully for hundreds of years, all fitting into a single page. And it’s their weak spot.

"Think about it, I’m the only way your culture and history don’t die; the temple was destroyed, your people enslaved and unable to continue their traditions, and additionally, the last owner ran off with the tribe's legacy," I say, emphasizing my points by poking the book, although I am altogether unsure if they feel it.

The book trembles, almost looking in shock as it spits out a piece of paper reading.

"What happened to the grand ziggurat, the tribe's glory?" The handwriting on the page is discordant and unsure.

I wince realizing that they didn’t exactly get the news when the last twit ran away to the astral only to somehow starve to death while needing no food. I facepalm and reluctantly say,

"The temple was teleported away from the mortal plane at great cost, shunted off into the astral so that the ones called Skin Forgers wouldn’t have access to it. And then in the Astral, the First Shaman's defense system, well, it ruined the vast majority of the artwork." I say being careful to mosy on past the fact that the defense system engaged in order to murder me.

Alarmingly, the book starts to bleed the previously empty pages starting to drip with ink, as it jerks back and forth with dry rustles. The book choking on grief and sorrow. As it struggles to swallow the terrible revelations that I brought forth.

Pitying them I hesitantly pat the book saying, "There, there, I scryed all the artworks I found, and while I most certainly didn’t find them all, I remembered what I could. I promise to write what I saw on the last page, alright?"

The book seems to slowly calm down, sucking in its tears, and bit by bit coughing less as I continue to gently soothe them as best I can. Eventually, after a long while, it spits out a new page.

I snatch it from the air as it slowly falls and I read, "I don’t think you understand, that is why we keep this from you. Although we did not know of the desecration of the tribe's two great pillars, we could guess from our seventh member's accounting that it wasn’t good. The step of the process where a new shaman falls and gets back up is where they usually create the most impactful additions to this book. Some shamans thrive with lots of information, but from what we have seen, you are closest to your heart when you do difficult things with few resources"

"That might be true, but I doubt that any magician of yours except for the first had any idea how to make an enchantment. I’ve seen glimpses of the process through the eyes of your people; the vast majority of the tribe knew some hedge magic, knowledge, and magical artifacts passed down in the ages." I say finally able to express the frustration I felt when I first read that bit of text.

I see the book aiming to spit out another piece of text, but before they finish, I sush them.

Plus, you dimwits, this thing is kind of a roadblock right now. I can’t move on to other, more innovative problems that don’t involve me banging my head against a wall until I get done with this. I might figure it out eventually, but most likely my solution would be far worse compared to the answer that was made generations ago." I said refusing to let them cough out some paltry argument against my points.

The book shifts in place, acting uncomfortable underneath my gaze, before coughing out a note with extreme force, I presume in an act of spite against my interruption.

But it does not go far, falling onto the floor right side up, conveniently allowing me to see written on it. "Fine, but we do this only once and only because the array is especially useful to you, we worry that more will unduly influence you. Sadly enough, you are our apparent only hope; we can’t afford to stunt your growth. Don’t ask for us again; we will be the ones to decide if you are ready."

With that, the book glistens with a strange gray light, lifting off the ground before drifting back down to the table, its page open to a display.

"How to Recharge Your Runes by The First Shaman"

Now, as around a week goes by, you will find that your enchantments will run out of sun, the invested Language emptied. You might have kept this at bay with a couple of clever tricks, like weakening the enchantment with a modifier or stacking many enchantments onto a single item. But the way you make heirlooms instead of a cheap trick is by creating a storage array function, then a gathering array function, and feeding the gatherer into the Store function.

A storage array function is easy enough: just slap a border around 3 Store=Energy and turn them into an array by looping them together. The Store function is extremely Language intensive but has no purpose other than as a referral, so you could just stop here and be satisfied with your greatly expanded shelf life, or you could do something grander and keep the cycle going forever.

Because a gathering array allows you to essentially use the emotions around you to power the storage array function. Now, most thought before me that although emotions are obviously all around us they cannot be used as fuel in the mortal plane. But who the hell says that the astral forest is the sole domain of emotions? The heady confidence of a speech can just as easily power up your enchantment as bleed onto the other side. So as long as you bring the item along for emotional moments, it will take the leftover emotion that should go to the astral forest to empower its spirit, big or small, and instead take it for you.

If you’re crazy, you could also take it to the astral plane and recharge it by stealing from the spirits or using physical power. But that’s far too inefficient; it would take something like getting struck by lightning or blasted with a volcano to recharge a proper artifact.

Just say your speeches, save the lives of others, and inspire hope, and the vast majority of artifacts will be powered until you die, and then far beyond that when you give it to your children."

As I finish reading it, my eyes catch on the little bit near the end—the mention of lightning strikes—because it seems like the spirits were right. Summoning lightning is right up the alley of anyone past the 1900s. It looks like automation has come for magic, and it's looking to take its job.