Short summary of the last chapter:
Spoiler :
Kretchof worked with the new necromancer a bit. Voice killed the bard, and built Susan a large house. He also promised 100 potions to Wolf.
Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment!
I finished the one hundred potions in only a couple of hours. They were all to the potency of the one I gave for a sample. After that I went to Susan and asked what else he usually bought.
“He usually gets some basic armor and weapons. I don’t know what he keeps buying them for though. He already bought enough to outfit a small army. If the merchants didn’t restock my inventory every night I wouldn’t be able to keep up.”
“Thanks for the info!” I smiled my best for her. “Is there anything you need? Equipment-wise? I can make a basic setup.”
She gave me a tight hug, then rapidly started listing off several things she would need to do some minor experiments to further her research. She had apparently hit a bottle neck with her chemical research.
“I’ve actually been trying to find a way to cure diseases without healing magic, or the specific potions.”
Of course I knew a way to do this, but I couldn’t use outside knowledge. I tried thinking of a way I could give her a hint about it. It had to be round about enough to not include any info from my world.
As I thought about it, I began to think of something I could experiment with myself.
The bard character had given me an interesting idea about the ways I could use mana. When I first gained the force mage class, I had to imagine the mana around me. Later I was able to manipulate it based on mathematical equations.
There was obviously more than one set way to actually use mana. For the next three days I made 100 potions each day, and practiced using mana in every way I could imagine.
Wolf was surprised when I brought the potions to him the first day.
“I’ll admit,” Wolf said while nodding approvingly. “I didn’t think you had it in you. I’ll take another hundred tomorrow as well.”
And so it went.
I could still cause the mana to form by picturing the exact feeling. That only allowed me to buff/debuff myself, or cast spells with me as the center.
What was it that the bard said? He cast magic based on his emotions? I guess I’ll try that out.
It was harder than I thought it would be. Even when I was angry, no mana went to destroy the object I aimed my anger at.
When I made myself sad, no mana tried to comfort me. On the second day of trying I had to review what the bard did.
He said his emotions were the catalyst of the mana. So what is the instrument that guides the catalyst? … Ah! The instrument!
The magic spells he used were decided by the songs he played. So there has to be something to shape the mana, huh?
Even with emotions providing the access to mana, the spells required a driving force. For Johnny the song he played had turned into the spell. I could probably mimic that, but my musical abilities were very low.
I began to sing a song my mother used to sing to me to put me to sleep.
It was about a man that lived in a dying forest. He nurtured the forest, and took care of it for many years. Every day he would go out and sing,
‘Flowers, grass and trees. Stems and roots and leaves. Grow and grow and come back to me. Return to life and vigor please.’
With each passing year the forest gained more of its life force back. He continued to take perfect care of the forest until it was a thriving metropolis of life.
The forest loved him like a father, and watched over him every day after that. The forest noticed the man was lonely, so one day the forest summoned a tree spirit to give him a friend.
The tree spirit turned out to be a dryad, the spirit of a tree. The man became friends with the dryad. Eventually the dryad taught the man how to speak to animals.
Then the man was able to have a lot of friends. Every day the man would play with the animals, and talk to the dryad. It was a happy life. He lived like that until the day he became too weak to get out of bed.
The animals, having been his friends since for generations, took care of him in his old age. When he passed away the entire forest mourned for him. Truly he had led a good and fulfilled life.’
When the song was over I opened my eyes. My mana had decreased by a sizable amount, so I was expecting something good at least.
All around me the plants seemed to be flourishing. Flowers were blossoming, the trees were full of leaves, and even the grass and bushes seemed to be dripping with vigor.
One could easily revive an entire forest with that song if they sang it enough.
Alright, the spell itself was useless, but I did learn how to use mana in ways if I can’t figure out the equation. So it wasn’t a total waste.
I practiced with the new type of mana manipulation for the entire day. I realized I just had to have a clear goal in mind, and lose myself in my imagination. It wasn’t a magic fit for battle.
On the third day I tried to find other ways to use mana besides the three I knew, but I couldn’t figure out how. I still spent the entire day doing it though.
The estate was looking more impressive every time I took a break and looked. By the end of the three days, all of the area around the large house was planted with the common weed and green healing herbs.
I allowed Moro and SparrowHawk to have their fun, so it was up to Sol and Tear to do all of the planting and harvesting. Eli was creating the rest of the house, equipped with an underground level and all.
Meanwhile I had Golem start trapping parts of the house I thought would prove useful. Some of them were downright horrible. I couldn’t wait for the next few days to be over.
I had a plan cooking that would take place, most likely, in a few days. I couldn’t be sure since it relied heavily on the intelligence of the groups I had SparrowHawk and Moro mess with.
The amount of fire mana Drake gathered was off the scales. I made sure to put a limit on it, so as not to mess the ecosystem up. It seemed as though the forest must have been under a drought though. I planned on having Tear give water to the forest.
If Gaia got pissed at me at this point I’d be screwed. Plus it would be good to obtain the favor of the nature goddess since I was going to be staying in nature for a while.
Drake went out further and further with each trip, so it took longer and longer. Still the amount of fire mana collected would have been enough to instantly evaporate a small lake.
I used the massive amount of excess fire mana to enchant a few of the traps that Golem was laying. The only problem with enchanting items and not people, was that the items had a set amount of ‘activation times’.
For what I was doing I set it to five times. The traps would emit 1/5 of the total heat, five times total. After that they’d have to be recharged or re-enchanted.
It would be fun to watch when it all started. You see I had given SparrowHawk one more instructions before letting the two go. I gave them several pieces of paper, each marked the location of Susan’s hut, and each had the name Voice0fReason is here.
I made sure that Moro knew to do as much damage as possible before they got the notices. That way they would push all of their anger on me.
Now why would I want their anger directed towards me? For a very simple reason. I wanted to experiment a bit.
If my traps killing the players gave me points, I would focus on that. If they didn’t, well then at least there would be less people for the others to get points off of.
I say this like I know for a fact that my traps will at least kill some of the people that attempt to enter my estate. And since Moro’s mischievous pranks awarded me points, I wanted to see if I just had to directly cause the death of someone for it to award me with the points.
If I got points for just my traps killing the people, I’d never have to worry about actually confronting the peons again. That was the most ideal situation though.
After the third day I began to think of Susan’s problem. I went to my white room, and looked a something up on my computer.
After about half a day of experimenting I had made my first enchanted item! By this I mean it was the first item I completely made, and enchanted myself.
“Alright, I am going to buff your eyes, and I want you to look through this.”
I held out a small stone cylinder, and buffed her eyes. She looked through it, and almost dropped it in surprise.
To make the object, I had made an orb of water, and took out all of the heat. After freezing the entire thing, I cut it in half. I began taking off pieces of the water mana, to delete parts of the ice.
I whittled it down to only a small curved thin object. I created four more like it, but curved at different angles, and smaller in size. Each one could fit perfectly into the one bigger than it. Kind of like the Russian dolls.
I made an earthen cylinder, and put them all in it. I even added a small mechanism to adjust the ice.
After enchanting Susan’s eyes, I had her look through the object. It was a microscope. I had looked up the designs to a very basic do-it-yourself type. I enhanced Susan’s eyes to be able to see more.
The enchantment coupled with the lenses would let her see microscopic entities. I spent several hours making the microscope.
The reason was I had to test out my ability to enchant. I realized that my intent was as important as the exact equation of mana I put in. Although it took a while to figure out the equation. Luckily I had Ancestor’s help for that.
I actually had to formulate the exact details of how much mana was needed to sustain the lenses, how cold or warm it could get before it messed with the product, and how they could store extra mana etc.
Without inspect making the equations go by faster, I probably would have spent days on them. It was an interesting idea that I had though. Using the one weakness to provide power for the enchantment.
I made a single sheet of ice to test with before I crafted the lenses. I enchanted it with various amounts of water and fire mana, to see what it did. At 95% water mana, and 5% fire mana I struck gold.
Basically all of the fire mana near the lenses were drawn to the lenses, and became fuel for the water enchantment. The fire basically just provided a means to sustain the water. Since there was no nearby fire, the lenses remained perfectly frozen.
So the outside of the lens was excessively hot, but the lens itself was solid ice. It wasn’t the best enchantment, but it at least did the trick.
After that I had to practice taking away the exact amounts of water mana to create the exact angles of the lenses. It took about an hour to actually finish the first lens, but after that it went pretty quickly.
I didn’t mention anything about bacteria, but I hoped should would take the hint. Either way I couldn’t do any more without raising the flag of the system.
As I gave her eyes the ability to see long distances, I said “Think of that as a birthday present.”
She looked at me with sparkles in her eyes. “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone my birthday. I never expected to get anything.” Tears seemed to be forming in her eyes.
“My birthday isn’t for another month, but thank you.” She threw one arm around my neck as she held the microscope close with the other.
If my intimacy wasn’t at max before, then it sure was now. After a brief explanation on how to adjust the thing, I let Susan go about her business.
The problem was, and I told her, she wouldn’t be able to use the microscope to its fullest potential unless I had her eyes buffed. I also made it clear I could only keep her buffed while I didn’t have much else to do.
Luckily my fairies were able to do basically anything I was. Except blend the mana types to the degree that I could. I didn’t really want them to be able to do that anyway. One cannot control those that are more powerful than they without effort.
After I finished the biology equipment, I took the idea and created a makeshift telescope. It wasn’t as good as one a sailor might buy, but it was only going to be used for emergencies or fun.
The best part was that the mana required for the upkeep didn’t come from me. I loved that part. It gave me a lot of ideas on how to enchant things besides just giving buffs, or temporary damage types.
I even made it so Sol had a bit of enhanced vision, but that quickly failed. Mana began draining from Sol’s body at an alarming rate. Buffing fairies with their own mana as a supply battery was a bad idea.
While the number of potions Wolf remained the same, the types of potions he requested changed dramatically each day.
It was interesting to see which kinds of potions he would want. He flipped his shit when I kept my bandages in my inventory and made the healing potions.
The healing potion bandages sold for twice what the potion and bandage would have. I was raking in the gold. Of course I had to spend most of it to buy the supplies to make the potions, but with my discount I still made a nice bit of money.
All of my money went into buying supplies from Susan. Not living supplies, we made due with what Susan got each day, and what Moro could get us.
No I bought basic leather, and iron ore and the like. I had decided to work on my blacksmithing and tailoring skills. If my crafting went up high enough I could just cut Evan out of the equation altogether.
The first thing I worked on was making an iron sword. I used fire mana to heat the ore, and metal mana to shape it. It took a few hours, but I finally created a ‘Shoddy Iron Longsword’.
Shoddy Iron LongswordMaterial QualityLowWork QualityLowDamage25-30Durability50/50This weapon was created using a method only the crafter knows. The purity of the iron in this sword is higher than most other similar swords.
It wasn’t bad for a first attempt at creating a weapon. It would have obviously turned out better if I had an actual forge, but that was a luxury I didn’t have.
Anyway, after I made the sword, I began to hone its edge with metal mana. The minimum and maximum damage went up by 5 points each, and the name changed to ‘Sharpened Shoddy Iron Longsword’.
I began infusing it with fire and water mana, making an enchantment to cause any wound caused by the sword to burst into flames.
The water enchantment part made the water leave the wound, while the fire mana caused a massive amount of heat to build up and explode. The sword could activate 20 times before it needed to recharge.
After making the sword I had an ingenious idea. I took a roll of bandages and enchanted them with a single use enchantment.
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It had three parts. The enchantments were used in order of the time I put that mana type in. First I added water mana to wash out the wound. Then I put fire mana to burn the wound shut. After that I put in water/light mana, to creating a healing water that would help the wound recover more quickly.
I decided to see how much the potion soaked, enchanted bandages were worth to Wolf. When he came by the next day I started to haggle.
“Hey Wolf! I have this new thing I’ve been working on. It’s a new way to improve the basic bandages. What do you say? Want to buy some?”
By this time he was no longer suspicious of me, or at least didn’t act that way.
“How much do they cost?”
Normal bandages would cost about a silver per stack. The potions cost a few silver depending on how good they were.
“It’ll cost a gold coin.”
He started to roll his eyes and walk away, but I stopped him.
“Now hold on, I didn’t tell you the best part.”
I offered him a small knife to cut himself with, and showed him the bandage. He sighed but cut himself.
My auto nursing skill kicked in, and only a fraction of and inch of the bandage was used. The bandage appeared on his cut, and began to glow.
I watched with amusement as his face changed expressions from disbelief, to shock.
“Now it won’t automatically heal like that, that was just one of my skills. It will heal as well though. So what do you say?”
“How much is it again?”
“Well I wanted to charge 5 gold, but Susan said I had to go cheaper than that since I had just put these on the market. She eventually said I could at least put it on for one gold. I really think people would buy it for more though.
How much would you buy it for?”
He thought about it for a moment, “Well, I would only buy a stack for 50 silver. A gold piece is a bit much. I might pay more if I had a steady supply. They are much better than just potions, or bandages. Your usual potion soaked bandages are great, but this is insane.”
It was true. The enchanted bandage could basically heal any wound, even if it was life threatening. The amount of bandage used would always be fairly low.
I didn’t actually think it was worth a gold coin, but it was great to even get 50 silver. That was still about ten times what one potion and a stack of bandages were worth.
“If you want, I could try to make these instead of the potions.” In reality I had to make the potions as well, but I wasn’t going to make him both potions and enchanted potion soaked bandages.
He readily agreed. “Good. I’d like these instead.”
I nodded vigorously. “Alright, they will be 50 silver until I can make enough each day to make a ‘steady supply’.”
After he left, and I began to implement my plan. I made dozens of rolls of the bandages, and planned to give them to him the next day. I had hoped to make more money than just 30.5 gold, but that was more than I had now. I had a total of 30 gold pieces at that moment.
The next day would over double my total amount. Since I hadn’t really dealt with money much, I didn’t know exactly how much that was, but at least I was sure that it could buy me some good food.
I practiced with stealing mana from one of the non-soaked bandages for a while. After I got to the point where I could do it without thinking, I helped out on the estate.
At this point we had a metal drawbridge, that crossed twelve feet of excessively deep water. After I had enough healing plants to work with for several weeks, we stopped making more.
Instead I made Tear water the forest. That way I might make Gaia even happier. Tear could only water a small section of forest before getting tired out, but it was enough to get my point of forest loving across.
I made the moat water especially nasty. The entire moat, eight feet across by twelve feet deep, was filled with pain inducing poisonous water. If someone tried to cross and fell in that, they would be in so much pain they wouldn’t be able to swim.
On the bank closest to the stone estate, there was a cliff that was raised four feet above the water. The cliff surrounded the entire estate, except for the drawbridge area. But that area was blocked by the bridge itself.
Moro continued to go with SparrowHawk each day. Together they bombed and otherwise harassed the other players. My points had slowed down the amount they increased by though.
For being in the forest for that many days, my nature mana purity was already at 55%. It now took slightly less mana to do nature mana things.
I still had to work on light, wind, fire, and darkness mana. Once I got those to at least 1% purity, then my total pure mana capacity would go to 1% of my total mana.
I really wanted that pure mana. It basically multiplied my total mana by 9! If I could get 100% purity with all mana types, even if I didn’t increase my int at all, I’d have the equivalent to 24,300 mana.
I couldn’t purify any mana but nature mana right then though. That was because I was so densely surrounded by the nature mana.
The traps laid in the building itself were clever, and a bit evil. I made sure to tell Susan that this entire thing was basically one big set-up. I was building this place in case we were attacked.
We only went into four rooms. The kitchen, the main hall, our respective bedrooms, or the toilet room. I had made a toilet with a stone pipe, the pipe led really far away, into a lake. The lake was big enough as to not cause me to worry about polluting it.
It took Eli a while to make that tunnel though. It was big enough to fit an earth fairy after all.
Golem continued to make the metal traps, and Sol decided to heal injured animals in the forest. I allowed Sol to do that, mainly because it would further increase my intimacy with Gaia.
The next day was when I planned to do everything. I planned on killing Wolf, and taking his points. There was no doubt in my mind that he was in a group of two. Although he probably team up with a larger group or groups, and led them.
Otherwise it would be wasteful to buy so many potions and healing items. Unless he was a merchant, but his body build quickly took away that option.
After I triple checked all of the traps and triggers, I set up the bait.
In a huge explosion of light and wind, I made an announcement. With Sol’s help I made an overly large light explosion. With SparrowHawk’s help I made my voice reach far into the forest. “COME ONE! COME ALL! TO THE HERO HUNT! WE HAVE THE LEADING MAN: VOICE0FREASON! HE IS READY FOR THE FIGHT, AND WORTH AN ASTOUNDING 512 POINTS! NOW ISN’T THAT NICE! BUT BE WARY WE ALREADY HAVE MANY PEOPLE HEADING TO HIS LOCATION!”
I had sent out small stone tablets with perfect maps to the estate. With the amount of people coming it would be interesting. Of course both mine and Susan’s rooms came with an escape tunnel that led far into the forest.
I had Eli place the bombs near the top layer of earth, just outside of the moat. I also placed many bombs inside the perimeter.
The fire mana collection was large enough to fight off a small horde of enemies. I would definitely be using that to my advantage.
All I had to worry about were the two teams of two people each. They seemed like they would be the most troublesome.
With Ancestor always watching the surrounding area, it would be almost impossible for anyone to sneak up on us. Ancestor already noted several light mana signatures heading our way.
I made sure that none of the trees were within radius of the bombs. I always kept the patron god/goddess of the area in mind when thinking about these things.
I was spending my time creating metal tipped stone arrows. It was another experiment I wanted to try out. I was going to give ‘archery’ a try. I told Susan to stay inside when the groups got close enough to attack.
The first group poked their heads out of the forest. I had been experimenting with a number of things that day, including sustaining spells for long periods of time. It was time to try one out.
From the top of the estate I made a perfect wind tunnel, about an inch in diameter, appear. The wind tunnel was long enough to connect to the trees, and only took 250 mana per second.
It was a lot, but I could get that back in only ten seconds of rest. The amount of power it offered was substantial. I could use it up to 50 feet. That was about a third of the distance of a short bow. I put one of the stone arrows into the wind vortex.
It perfectly followed the line of wind, all the way to one of the people that poked his head out. I added a spin to the wind tunnel, just to give the arrow extra umph.
By the time the arrow approached the line of trees, it was going about as fast as a bullet. The arrow hit the poor man squarely on the head, and continued to pass into the ground. It was gruesome to watch the brain matter splatter the ground.
Instantly the members of his group hid themselves again. The wind tunnel had been visible, but they didn’t hide since they didn’t know what it was at that time.
More people began to pop up from the trees, and more people were shot through the head. After five kills people stopped trying a frontal assault.
I went back inside the building. The next phase was to wait and see who the most powerful of the groups was.
After a few minutes a loud roar could be heard. Everyone had apparently agreed that a simultaneous attack was the best solution. They even all attacked from the same side.
I hadn’t expected something so well thought out. Still, it was within the extremes of the contingencies I had planned for.
I took over inspect, and watched the mana signatures of the people coming to attack. It certainly wasn’t the entire group. Only about forty people were there.
That meant either most of the people were dead, or didn’t think the message was real. Either way I’d have to get most of these guys to guarantee a victory.
The people began to run to the moat, only to be blown to bits by the ‘mines’ the ran on. The light amount of pressure a foot added was enough to cause the bombs to blow.
It wasn’t as powerful as possible since they were partially buried underground, but they still managed to take a few people down. They started to cautiously pick their ways across the thirty feet of land after that.
The bombs only managed to injure a few more people. They did take out a limb or two though.
The group huddled around the moat. No one was willing to be the first to try swimming at this point. One person pushed someone in another group in.
The cries of pain from him even reached Susan and me. I already had Susan in her escape tunnel. If they made it here too quickly, then I’d have to bail.
One group crept back across the open field, and began to hack at a tree. Making a bridge would be the smartest way across. I shot off three arrows in quick succession when they got to the tree. Two out of the four people died from it.
The other two began to slowly cut, while being shielded by the tree itself. I sent out Eli and Drake.
Eli made way to the tree, and formed a deep pit below it. After the pit was quickly made, Eli began to slowly dig up to the top layer of earth. As soon as the first crack appeared, Eli hid in a nearby alcove created for the occasion.
Since the lumberjacks were cutting the tree, they did not realize the ground beneath them felt slightly off. When the tree finally began to show signs of toppling, it was too late.
The two men plus one tree, fell into the twenty foot hole. They could have climbed out, but Eli closed the top off too quickly.
After the top was sealed, Drake caught the tree on fire. With the closed off top, the room quickly filled with carbon dioxide. Suffocating the two in less than a minute.
When the hole appeared a few others tried to make it to them to help, but then the ground covered itself back up. They began to dig, but the dirt was too thick and solid. By the time they made it to the others, they had already died.
One of the very few mages in the group of thirty or so people, began a long ritual. A large wind spirit was summoned, and helped them cross the water. Only about twenty people crossed the water before I had completely drained the thing of mana.
He tried to summon it again, but this time I started sucking the wind mana away before it was even summoned. He still managed to ferry the other fourteen across while it was still in our realm.
The people started to run to the castle, but were interrupted by the bombs again. I smiled wickedly as I watched several light mana signatures extinguish.
The best part of watching this? I WAS GETTING POINTS! The traps counted as actually killing them. It was the best case scenario.
When they got close enough, I was saddened to not see EDI. It would have been fun to watch her die slowly.
The people eventually did make it to the estate, and began scaling the walls. A few people actually had grappling hooks. One person had a ladder. I sent Drake out, but they seemed to realize what the little flame wisp was going to do. They began shooting at it instantly.
I decided to let them come up at that point. As soon as the first person got close to the top, the spikes near him activated.
They each burst into a small wave of flames. The damage was minor, but the rope caught on fire. So much for not burning them out. Hehe.
After the ropes were burnt they had to all climb up the ladder. They were working together so well it worried me.
They were probably upset about all of the times Moro and SparrowHawk killed them. Losers need to lose though.
The ladder was somehow flame resistant. It wasn’t enchanted, but seemed to be made of wood. Inspect couldn’t identify it from that far away though.
The spikes only worked five times, but those five were enough to seriously damage the first person to come up the ladder. I used a large gust of wind just as she stepped on the top of the wall.
She fell over, and landed in the moat. The girl died as she swallowed the pain inducing water while screaming.
My mana was really low at that point. I had to back off and let the traps whittle the numbers down after that. It would take a bit of time to fully regain my mana.
When they breached the estate I ditched. I had hoped to only have a dozen left at most. I had killed off quite a few, but there were still more than two dozen.
Two dozen angry people was too much to deal with. I made my wind mana echo the sound of me running, and slowly led them to my room. I had already went into the tunnel beneath my bed.
The group were constantly being hit by bombs attached to thin strings, or by the enchanted spikes I had throughout the castle.
I ran to quickly catch up to Susan, since the tunnels we used connected almost instantly. I left Eli behind in the tunnel to create stone walls the people would have to break through. Eli was instructed to make four stone walls, not including the thick one I made after I jumped in the tunnel.
The thick one was about a foot thick, the others would only be half a foot. That would force the most determined of the group to use a bit of time to break through.
By the time they broke through all of them, I would have already been gone.
The thing that bugged me the most though, was that none of the people had been what i assumed were the highest tiered people.