Pudding’s zombie roach wolves ended up lasting two more days, just as he predicted, before they fell apart from the rot of death, but it allowed them enough time to set up a more defensible camp for getting loot. And by the end of the first week, Pudding had finished carving and empowering two man-sized golems. Jee was then able to direct the golems in the lumbering of the trees in the surrounding forest. The golems were able to work day and night producing planks of wood to sell to the System Shop. From experience, Pudding knew that selling wood planks to the shop, resulted in the best return on credits for the amount of time involved.
“How long before we can purchase the Oracle quest clue?” asked Jen
Pudding communicated with Jee and excitedly said, “I think it only take another two weeks of work by the golems before we have enough credeets to purchase the clue. Dis be great progress, we will be at least 4 weeks ahead of most of the other Oracle hunters.”
Sam was half-listening to their conversation as he continued to work on some basic enchantments, and commented, “I wish it was faster, but I’ll probably need the extra time to get these enchantments to work on this Deck.”
Tamako had noticed Sam just sitting and staring at the storage space stones he had been experimenting with and asked, “What’s this Deck doing to your enchantments?”
Sam sighed, “It’s frustrating!”
Before Sam could continue his explanation, Jen interrupted him with, “That’s what she said!”
Sam waived a middle finger at Jen, and replied, “mind your own business millennial!” With a smile on his face he turned back to Tamako, and continued, “Anyways, these stones will barely hold my storage enchantments. They are very limited in capacity, and I have to wait about a minute in between placing or removing any items from these storage stones. If you do it too quickly, watch what happens.” Sam picked up a stone and aimed it towards a tree and “fired” two logs from the ring. The logs smashed into the tree, but the enchanted stone crumbled and turned to dust.
“See, and that’s about the maximum it will hold. There’s just something on this Deck that is infused in everything that resists my enchantments.” Sam complained, as he let the stone-dust fall to the ground.
In reply, Tamako didn’t say a word, but simply raised her shitty bronze-tipped wooden spear in front of him and raised one eyebrow.
Sam thought about the crappy equipment they were all dealing with, and then with a grin replied, “you’ve got a good POINT! HA! But don’t worry, once I get it figured out, I’ll enchant the crap out of your spear and the rest of our gear.”
Tamako glanced at the point of her spear and groaned at his terrible pun, but she could tell he was feeling better.
Pudding was still cautious and uncertain about how to interact with the group, and knew some people could be very defensive about someone asking questions about their skills, and with trepidation he asked, “Master Sam, if it would not disturb you, I was curious…”
Jen easily sensed Pudding’s concerns, and interrupted “Pudding, don’t worry, you can ask Sam any kind of question you want. He doesn’t get triggered with ego shit, and he loves talking about enchantments to anyone that will listen.”
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Pudding looked between the two, noticing Sam nodding in agreement with Jen’s words, so he asked, “Do you think de weird mana you all use be causing de problem? I know de gnomes on dis Deck do a lot of enchantments. But of course, I don’t recall any of dem being able to make storage rings like de ones you make though.”
Sam nodded, and replied, “Yea, I was wondering about that too, but I really don’t want to let any of this unfiltered mana into my system. Maybe if I could use the local mana to place a basic strengthening enchantment first, then I could place a stronger enchantment on top of that? Of course, if I could just get access to our rings, we have plenty of items in there that can be converted to take enchantments.”
Pudding then asked, “Is there anyway I can supply de mana to power de enchantment while you are creating it?”
Sam shook his head, “I don’t think so, I have to focus on the underlying code of the enchantment, as well as the volume of mana, along with the intensity, and depth of the enchantment to supply the mana precisely as needed. Jen, do you have any ideas?”
Jen was already thinking on a resolution to the problem that was being discussed, and slowly started to put a voice to her plan, “Our body’s must process the mana in our core before we can use it for our skills and spells. I don’t think any of us should let anymore of this Deck’s mana into our system without filtering it first. I’m still cleaning the gunk out that I absorbed when we first arrived.”
Pudding had no idea what gunk Jen was referring to, but didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought, and just continued to listen, as Jen kept explaining, “However, my mana manipulation skills have skyrocketed since using the scroll. With a little practice, I think I could create a water hose with my mana and then link to Pudding’s processed mana, contain it in the ‘hose’, and run it through the hose into Sam’s mana system to the end of the channel in his hand where he activates his mana carving skill. There will probably be some minor mixing of Pudding’s dirty mana at the exact point where Sam uses his own mana to activate his skill and link it to Pudding’s dirty mana. The contamination of gunk should be very minor…. maybe. Does that make sense?”
Sam nodded, “Yes and no, but I’m willing to give it a try…oooh, I just got an idea, if it works, we can then use the technique to make a channeling stone that would do the same thing for us!”
Jen looked at Pudding, and asked, “You up for giving it a try?”
Pudding wasn’t a specialist in mana manipulation, but he’d heard of bad accidents from cults that channeled mana. However, he knew their chances of finding the Oracle would skyrocket if Sam could make the enchantments he claimed were possible. Pudding had already seen the power behind the log-shooters that Sam said were “terrible”. He replied, “I be helping anyway I can.”
Jen nodded, “I’m going to work on making and learning to control a mana channeling conduit. In the meantime, Sam, I want you to make as many of those log two-punch storage rocks as you can for our defense.”
===============
The next day as Jen was in a state of meditation working on her mana conduit, she sensed Slim heading their way. She then directed the bird she’d been using to keep a lookout, to fly in the direction of Slim to see if anything was up. She noticed Slim was moving steadily in their direction, but didn’t see anything to worry about. A short while later, Slim was close enough to send her a mental message, and said, “There is a gang of 13 people moving down near the bottom of the mountain range. They are paralleling the travel of some floating boats in the valley. They are about a day away, so they haven’t heard the lumbering you’ve been doing. You should quit your lumbering, and we can set up an ambush in time to kill them and take all their loot!”
Jen replied, “I think we’re just going to quiet down, get our defenses ready, and just let them pass by. They probably won’t see us this far up if they are focused on the valley.”
Slim somehow managed to message her in a way that she knew he was frowning with boredom and disappointment, and he said, “whatever…I’m going to go play on my own then.”
Through the eyes of her bird, Jen noticed Slim turn around, and head back the direction he’d come from.
Jen stood up, messaged Tamako and Sam, and said to Pudding, “We need to get ready for a fight.”