Zetli is a good lad. He's smart and good at people and takes to tasks like 'you get to decide who gets healing first' with only moderate bitching. He called me a bloody bastard orb. He can also drink quite a lot and taught Borb a few songs.

All in all a successful meeting. Got him to relax and give up that inconvenient little god delusion, I think, though he insists on keeping up the charade. Fine by me. I just don't wanna deal with that shit from the people I actually talk to. I can see how it's quite useful with randos tho.

An awkward moment when I cured his impotence and he got rather overexcited, but whatev. I understand. Bryn's fragile maiden heart will recover if she even remembers this in the morning. I wish I could've drunk too, but adding alcohol directly to my brainjuice seems like a bad idea. Anyways, he and Netli are dick twins now. I might have been able to solve the problem without just copy-pasting the entire dick code, but experimenting with a dude’s dick is kinda gay, ya know?

Eh, long as his balls don’t touch me it’s probably fine. Lost my bro handbook on the trip here.

Actually, Bryn was not nearly as shocked as I would have guessed she’d be.

I think I cleared up my little checklist of short term tasks. A whole bunch of options opened up real fast when I finally got a minion and I had to set things in motion real quick. Now I can finally relax and make dynamite and chocobos. Also, trees. Thanks, Bryn.

Naw, it's fine. I think I had a minor plant phobia after the moss thing and I needed a kick in the ass to get over that. Zetli will be much better at the whole talking to people bit. Good thing he came to me first. The cart trick was clever, but if I had had to ask HIM for help before apologized that'd be, uh. Hm.

There's probably a politician word for this.

Fuck it. That's what Zetli is for. He can think of the weasel words while he does all the messy people crap I can't be bothered with. He can give himself a title and a fancy hat in exchange. Plus, pants with pockets. He was real big on pockets.

Before he passed out I got him to write a note to his people that he was drunk as shit and staying over. Or something. I can't read. I need to learn how to read. Possibly in multiple languages. Ms. Kittysaur delivered it to Itzal and he muttered "Is he drunk?" So I think the message got through. Gave her a big ol’ haunch of anime meat.

Bitches love anime meat.

So much to do and a completely unknown amount of time to do it in. How long does it take the legion to march here? How long to march back? Why is there blood in the healing potions? How long until they turn around and return with an army big enough to squash us?

Seriously, blood and water and a bit of alcohol. That's it. That's all a healing potion is. Magic is bullshit.

Interesting bullshit. I got a little reading in while I was testing out what sort of silicon structures can act as a stabilizer for nitroglycerin. I know Nobel used kitty litter, but trying to produce kitty litter didn't work. Think it's some sort of fossil, but… Fortunately, nitroglycerin is simple as shit. Nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and glycerin. It'd get way more complex if I couldn't print chemicals on demand.

I tried to make nitroglycerin straight off but I don't think I got the shape right. Still, a few hours in a sealed chamber trying to replicate a history channel special I saw ten years ago and I was happily blowing things up. Good thing my tentacles don't have pain receptors! And that I don't actually need to be in the room!

That was intensive stuff, but after I got a sample of actual nitroglycerin I could just replicate it and then it was just a matter of trying different silicon shapes till I could throw the mess at the wall without it going boom.

Don't worry, I have goggles on.

Anyways, that bit was just standard materials sciences- test a billion configurations and mark down the results in totally arbitrary code while you get some reading done. Then abandon that class to pursue a sudden intense interest in Russian lit. Get yelled at by your dad for wasting his money. Point out that you have a scholarship. Get threatened with losing your scholarship by your advisor. Good times.

Russians are hilariously depressing folk.

Except instead of Russian lit I have a magic book shoved in my brain! It's fun. The content is fun, I can get it to appear as a physical-seeming book or a video or have it narrated to me by Morgan Freeman, and the structure of the soulthingy that contains it is also interesting!

A slick membrane surrounding a buncha stuff- memories? Pure knowledge? Which gets shoved through a lil organdevice which copies it and squirts lil packages over to my own soul. Those packages then unfold and present a single concept to me and then the package returns to the main mass. At this point I can change the method of presentation by changing my expectations. Clientside, not serverside. Funky!

Guessing this is an elaborate method of avoiding the whole jigglesoul issue. And by jigglesoul I mean all the structures inside the soul bouncing off the membrane smashing into each other because you just crammed the entirety of your self-image into some poor girl. Sorry, Bryn. I hope the perky new ass makes up for it. Slap it all you want.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

I'd feel like a creepy voyeur if I wasn't physically incapable of getting aroused.

As for the actual content… It's circuit diagrams. Weird looking and running off a very different logic, but basically the same thing. Interesting, but dry. Dry as the desert outside. The content is not fun. I lied. Interesting, but anti-fun.

Hmm. Speaking of deserts, I should get a few snorbs on silt duty. Can't imagine all that scrubland has good soil. Not gonna mix it with the drinking stream, of course. Actually, get some proper plumbing for the drinking water too.

Busy busy busy. Explosives, bird mounts, trees, armies, healing, plumbing, that evil crystal tree in the middle of the crater which is growing now that the geyser cloud is raining essence water. So much to do. Hopefully I won’t run out of soul while making all the warpstone to deal with this shit.

No soul would be bad, I think.

----------------------------------------

Zetli was on something disturbingly soft. He rolled off and hit the floor, groaning more in the expectation of pain than the pain itself. He felt good. Also… He reached down. An unfamiliar but very welcome morning problem. The chief levered himself up, looking around the room. Was he in the heavens? Everything was so strange and so comfortable.

Soft light gently shone from an enormous crystal in the ceiling. He blinked at it stupidly. The merchant part of him tried to calculate how valuable it was. It failed. Was that quartz? A hunk of cloudy quartz, utterly flawless and bigger than a man? He looked down. There was an arrow drawn on the floor. That was easier to understand. He followed the arrow.

He didn’t understand anything again. Fortunately, there were pictures to guide him. A strange chamberpot screamed at him when he tried to solve his most pressing problem- fortunately, it stopped screaming moments after, but… Well, he was wide awake now. As directed by the pictures he closed it after, then reopened it out of curiosity. It was empty and screaming again.

He had just used a fucking artifact to… Zetli shook his head. That kind of thought was how Ezekial won. Just accept it and move on. He brushed his teeth and then directed the water to the tub. It was an interesting experience. At first, the water was too cold and then he was about to boil. Plus, the smoke kept making him cough. There was a very nice rock to scrape his scales with, though. On the whole, he’d stick to a good, traditional roll in the sand.

Zetli stopped in middle of toweling himself off. The water-producing gem, the magic chamberpot. They weren’t artifacts. Ezekial had MADE them. The gem in the ceiling too? This was… He couldn’t even process how huge this could be. The entire world had changed when he was in the bathroom.

Small things. That honey wine. Real good stuff, incredibly sweet and deceptively potent, while also so infused with essence he didn’t even have a hangover. They could make a fortune off this. And then use that fortune to buy a bunch of things that Ezekial could make and improve with a wave of his glove. Could Ezekial just make the fortune directly? Mmm… Memories were hazy but he thought not. Something about heavy metals and breaking trade.

After getting dressed in a nice grey wrap completely covered in pockets he exited the bedroom. Well, first he played with the pockets that made ripping noises and had weird hooks on them and the pockets that had a sort of metal mouth you could open and close, but then he left. Bryn was eating breakfast, the drake was gnawing on an enormous legbone, and Ezekial was nowhere to be seen or heard.

He glanced at Bryn and flushed. “Er, sorry. I think I…” Zetli trailed off as she looked him directly in the eyes.

“Nice cock. Is it new?” Zetli sputtered. “Cmon, laugh. I’ve been working on that one for a while. Don’t worry though- I worked as a bouncer in a whorehouse for three years. Free room and board. They need a delver bouncer to deal with delver patrons. Had a bit of a rep- the widow. Because twice dumbasses fought a monster against my recommendation and I left them to die… Three times, now. This time I couldn’t detect it in advance though…” She sighed and shook her head.

“I’m sorry. They’re with the gods now.” Zetli muttered. Breakfast was some sort of fluffy sweet bread, weird dry flakes, milk, and eggs. He had three pieces of the bread but avoided the flakes. Seemed rather unappetizing. The milk was good though.

Without their host there they decided to travel down to the village, a load of tiny buildings and weird boxes filled with wood honeycombs in the box. The crab didn’t have a throne on it’s back anymore- it had been replaced by a platform with a little fence around it and a pile of pillows. The throne was in the back. It was accompanied by a drawing of a man sitting on it wearing a giant hat. He passed it to Bryn. “Do you think he’s joking?”

“I think he’s always joking.”

“Yes, but do I have to wear the hat?”

“Probably not.”

Zetli sighed and put the drawing back, then rummaged around to find the one for the weird boxes. It depicted bugs inside the boxes, goo, and men in weird outfits stealing their goo. He squinted. Bees? How do they get the bees in the box? Was this because of the honey wine from last night? He found the weird outfits tho. A full body stocking with a tough but transparent face mask.

Armor. Against bees.

The last was the tiny buildings. The accompanying picture was of someone looking at the tiny building and then building a bigger building that matched it. Made sense. Inside each one was a stack of instructions printed on beautiful blue paper. They were drawn rather oddly, but Zetli was able to figure it out. There were even drawings of buildings from a diagonal angle! You could DO that?

After a surprisingly short time they reached the camp- village now, Zetli supposed. Itzal was waiting there with a grim expression. Wordlessly he pointed out towards the center of the basin. Zetli squinted. “Thulson’s Claw? Did it?..”

“Dungeons put out essence. That cloud last night…” He handed Zetli a leather bundle. A telescope, an artifact. No-one could make glass that clear anymore. Except… Ezekial probably could.

“A problem?” Bryn asked as he raised the glass to his eye. Thulson’s claw was visibly thicker, with stalactites hanging from it like- It shuddered. A plume of dust rose into the air. “Not anymore.”

“Yeah.” Zetli lowered the eyeglass. “I think he does this on purpose. The timing.”

“Ezekial? Yeah. He waited until you looked to do… Whatever he just did.”

“What?” Itzal asked.

“What?” Bryn and Zetli replied in unison, then grinned.

Itzal waved his hand and hit them both with a cloud of freezing cold air.