Chapter 257

KABLAM

An explosion lit up the small workshop Gragle and Riven were working in, the third time that day, and Riven blinked away dust with a cough to the laughter of his two girlfriends at his back.

Wiping soot off his face and spitting out dirt, then spitting onto the ground, Riven playfully glared over his shoulder at the two demon women who cackled even more loudly at the absolute mess his attempt at creating Graphics had caused.

“Laugh it up you two.” Riven said with an eye roll as Athela laughed so hard she fell out of her seat, rolling on the floor while Fay wiped away tears.

He didn’t think it was THAT funny, but at least the two women he had fallen for were having a good show of it.

Azmoth, who’d been holding the new totem they’d been working on together, was entirely unaffected by the blast and just sighed with a shake of his head. “Sad, sad, sad. Good thing you powerful mage, because you bad at this.”

“I’ve got to agree with the big guy.” Gragle the gnome said from behind a blast shield a few feet away, looking down skeptically at the smoldering remains of Riven’s latest attempt where hellfire still ate away at pieces of wood on the reinforced metal table. “You’re really quite terrible at this.”

“Well that’s not very nice!” Riven said with a dramatic humph, folding his arms grumpily in large part to put on a show for the two girls who continued to laugh. “I take offense to that! Let’s try again, I’ll get it next time.”

Nora, who’d been out to grab some more alcohol, knocked on the door of Gragle’s estate and then walked in. Snapping a look to the other two women who were still cackling, and then to Riven’s blackened, soot-covered face, she couldn’t help but grin in amusement as well. “I see things aren’t progressing too fast. Oh, and Gragle - there are some men out there looking for you. They asked me to have you come out.”

The scarred gnome’s face paled. “Who? Don’t tell me it’s those damnable mafia guys again.”

“The guy’s name was Ronnie? I think he was the same one from the bar. He said you had an order to fill for him.” Nora replied with a shrug, setting down the jugs of wins she’d procured with a snort. “He didn’t seem too intent on coming in here though.”

Gragle’s scowl become more prominent, and with a sigh he hopped down off his stool. “Of course he doesn’t want to come in here with the savior of our town around… Gods damn it, I’ll-”

“I’ll take it from here, lil bro.” Riven got up, dusted himself off, and started to walk out the door. “Just to confirm what Nora said - Ronnie was that guy who was bullying you back at the bar right?”

Gragle blinked, rubbed a hand through his short black beard, then slowly nodded. “Y-Yes… I owe him a lot of gold due to interest. And I’m lucrative, so he’s going to be resistant to letting me go. I make graphics for him to imbue into items for rare or higher tier enchantments and sigil skeletons while I pay my debt off.”

“You owe him gold? For what?” Riven asked curiously with a head tilt.

Gragle opened his mouth to reply, then thought about it. “I suppose it’s for protection?”

“Protection from who?” Riven asked, brows furrowed.

Gragle paused again. “From… himself? And other gangs here in the outpost.”

With a click of his tongue, Riven nodded and gave Fay a kiss before playfully jabbing Athela in the side to make her squeal with laughter. “Alright, well I’m going to go talk to him to see if I can knock some sense into him.”

Before Gragle could object, Riven pushed through the door to immediately come face to face with a man in full steel plate armor - trimmed in red. It was the same knight-looking motherfucker from the bar just as Riven had expected, but the man’s posture straightened when it was Riven who came out instead of the gnome. He had four other thickly-built men dressed in similar attire, each with short swords and round shields imbued with various enchantments - all of them wearing the same strange sigil of what Gragle called ‘The Scrags Mafia.’

Apparently this guy was more invested in Gragle than Riven had thought.

“Honored savior.” Ronnie, the central figure said from underneath his helm. No doubt he was talking about Riven saving the town. Bowing in respect for just a moment, the other four men undertook the same gesture. “I apologize, I didn’t realize you were the one who was keeping our employee company. Perhaps this is a bad time?”

Riven put on a fake smile, looking left and right down the alleyway behind Gragle’s house. “I’m afraid Gragle is preoccupied, I just wanted to let you know that. He says he owes you money? I was hoping that I could buy out his debt, because I’ll be utilizing his skills for a good amount of time while I’m here.”

They stared at each other after that. Birds chirping overhead broke the silence, and Ronnie eventually cleared his throat while standing up straighter. “Gragle is employed by us out of choice, not necessity. He does owe me quite a sum of Elysium Coins, but that is neither here nor there - and I don’t think you’d be able to buy his debt out just by how much it is he actually owes us.”

Riven raised an eyebrow, taking note of a scrawny human man who turned the corner - saw Ronnie - and quickly scrambled away. He let out a tired sigh. Picking through his spatial sack and pulling out a hundred gold pieces from the mountain of gold he’d collected off bodies after the monster swarm, he threw it to the ground with a jingling of coins. “I’m not giving you a choice on the matter. Leave with the money, or your guts are going to be plastered along the alley walls here in the next thirty seconds.”

***

Three quick flashes of red light illuminated the alleyway, as seen from inside Gragle’s workshop just a minute after Riven had left out the back door, and within seconds - the vampire entered back inside with a wide smile on his blood-flecked face. He held up both hands to Gragle, and chuckled ruthlessly. “Problem solved buddy! I… oh, high Genua. When did you get here?”

He turned his head to where Genua had just sat down at another table off to the side. She’d joined Athela, Fay, and Nora while they poured glasses of wine and gave him looks tinged with different but positive emotions. Fay especially had come a long way since her arrival earlier that day, and had settled into a far calmer and more normal way of thinking about things after being in Riven’s presence - seeing that he had in fact NOT changed much in terms of how he treated her.

Despite having Gluttony as a symbiote.

“Hello, master.” Genua said with a small smile, standing up from her chair to bow to him in respect. “I just arrived back from the Blood God’s realm. I apologize if I am coming at a bad time.”

“No, no of course not.” Riven said with a grin - waving her back down to her seat and joining Azmoth and Gragle at the thicker metal work-table in the center of the room. “How was it? Good I hope? Did they teach you how to fight? You’ve been gone hours.”

Genua looked like she had something to say, but thought better of it and shook her head. “Uhm… Well… It was alright. Interesting, certainly, but they didn’t teach me how to fight just yet. It was full of lore on the religion, going over my duties as a priestess, and some other… interesting topics were brought up.”

“Such as?” Riven asked, curious.

“Uhm…” Genua scratched the back of her neck with a sheepish smile. “I’d rather tell you in a more private setting. Also, it’s been… a while. I was hoping to relieve some stress as I talk about it… Perhaps later tonight, I can visit you to talk more? Perhaps with Fay and Athela as well?”

There were a brief few moments where absolute silence enveloped the room.

Fay glanced over at the elf thrall with a raised eyebrow and a curious frown due to the way Genua had stated her question, but didn’t say anything otherwise. Athela on the other hand also looked rather surprised, as Genua wasn’t usually so forward about anything at all, but shrugged while she continued drinking and laughing with Nora about something they’d seen earlier today in the market.

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Riven gave her the same expression Fay had, raising a single eyebrow, then nodded slowly. “Sure… That would be…”

He glanced at Fay, who shrugged, and then Athela who waved him off.

He raised his gaze back to Genua. “Should be fine?”

Not sure how to take the odd shift in Genua’s demeanor, he turned his attention back to the table where Gragle had set out another set of already partially-completed graphics for Riven to take a shot at.

Concentrating, and not yet getting the totem pieces in line until he had the graphics down again, Riven closed his eyes and began to focus on the three-dimensional skeletons of runic infernal mana hovering in the air ahead of him.

The thing about these ‘graphics’ that Gragle was trying to conceptualize for Riven was that they were both far more basic and far more intricate than normal enchantments or inscriptions by a long shot. As contradictory as that was at first glance, it made sense when Riven got the feel for just what it was he was looking at.

Graphics were a way to formulate the magic of thought into physical concepts by utilizing the basic code of the system. So, in a way, he was building up basic enchantments or spells much in the same way computer codes back on Earth could have been put together by numerical 1’s and 0’s. So it was basic in the aspect that he wasn’t dealing in anything very complex on a conceptual level, but it was far more intricate because he could make very minute and very specific changes to the ‘code’ based on an incredibly small tweak to the source code of the spell.

Instead of 1’s and 0’s however, Gragle told him there were five concepts to be aware of when constructing a graphic. Three of the concepts were Re, Vo and Tin that acted like an axis to travel along when inputting source code. Based on mathematics from Riven’s home planet, they could be conceptualized the same way an X, Y, and Z axis was made when describing a three-dimensional space. Then there were the concepts of Nun and Zika, with Nun representing orientation and affinity of a power source such as a pillar orientation - and Zika representing the power of intent.

Ro, Vo, Tin, Nun, and Zika.

Riven was having a hard time putting it all together, but then again this was his very first day and despite all the laughs his two drunk girlfriends were having at his expense - he was pretty proud of himself for grasping what he had.

“He’s missing a concept, but I can’t remember what it is.” Gluttony whispered in the back of my mind, causing me to frown in wonder at what that could be - but after further probing on the subject it was apparent that this particular bit of knowledge had been stripped from the sin by Elysium’s purge.

“Regardless.” Gluttony continued inside my head while I started working on a new source code based on the startup Gragle had already created for me. “This is good practice for us both. I’m rusty. Perhaps I’ll remember it if I gain some insight and inspiration while working.”

“One can only hope…” Riven muttered under his breath with an appreciative internal nod to Gluttony, before going back at it with the infernal burning graphics hovering ahead of him over the table.

Adjusting Ro, Vo, and Tin - he was able to shift the 3-dimensional structure of the source code and thus change the burning markings in the air. It was all based around a central point of intent, which was marked by Zika, but it appeared Zika was also far more complex than just being a ‘starting point’ so to speak. Riven could feel his intent on Zika from the already started graphic phase and change whenever he shifted from the concept of ‘explosion’ to the concept of ‘solid wall’ or ‘create weapon.’ Each of these conceptual changes also changed the runic markings themselves, altering Ro, Vo, and Tin slightly as they did - whereas Ro, Vo, and Tin didn’t directly influence Zika in the reverse direction.

Which was slightly puzzling.

Changing Nun in turn caused even more dramatic changes, because it changed the pillar or power source the graphic was based on. This in turn influenced all the other four concepts, but yet again did not work in the reverse. Changing Nun caused Zika, Ro, Vo and Tin to change. Changing Zika caused Ro, Vo, and Tin to change - without changing Nun. Changing Ro, Vo, and Tin had no effect on anything but themselves.

Riven shifted between Death, Infernal, Blood, Unholy, and Shadow pillars as orientations for Nun that would cause the entire graphic to change in ways he didn’t necessarily grasp just yet. Experimenting at the urging of Gragle, who said that self exploration was the best way to go about it and that he was only there to start the process and answer base questions - Riven found that infusing Nun with different levels of his affinities also caused changes to the overall structure of the graphic. He could infuse Nun affinities of 10%, 29%, 93%, 84%, or whatever he chose to do all the way up to the maximum affinity he had on a given pillar. This in turn made it so that people with higher affinities in a given pillar or sub pillar would be able to have the most leeway for change in a graphic based on how high they infused the graphic.

Changing from Infernal to Shadow, Shadow to Unholy, Unholy to Blood, and Blood to Death, Riven quickly found out that his Blood infusions were not only quicker than all the others - but but that he had a far more precise control on how the Ro, Vo, and Tin changes were.

The runes flickered, changed colors, reorganized themselves, and spluttered or died in the air in front of him over and over again. And over and over again, Gragle would restart the process in front of them and scurry back to get behind his blast wall with a reinforced window in the very center to watch Riven work. It was rather helpful, because the hardest part of utilizing graphics was actually starting them in the first place - which is why Gragle’s particular set of unique abilities concerning graphics was so highly valued.

Or so the gnome said.

But as Riven got to work, he quickly came to the realization that the gnome probably wasn’t lying - as even despite Riven’s high affinities, he had an incredibly hard time manifesting these graphics at all. Thankfully, they were easier to manipulate whenever they actually appeared after their initial summons.

“Hand me that board, Azmoth.” Riven motioned over to a pile of supplies.

Azmoth did as asked, and would be the voluntary experiment buster from time to time - activating the runes and graphics Riven created and taking much of the blow with his armored body hardly getting scratched. Due to this being a training session anyways, Riven hadn’t really infused much mana into these things - rather he just wanted to get the basic concepts down so he could create REALLY deadly totems later on.

Hours rolled on by, and immersed in his work - he only got up to give Athela and Fay a warm set of hugs before they went off to a guest bed Gragle had. The gnome and Azmoth stayed up with him as they got to work fusing pieces, odds, and ends of various totems together while infusing graphics into the objects and then utilizing them to create new and intricate runes.

“I can’t say I’ve had this much fun creating graphics in quite a while!” Gragle mused, looking up at Riven’s charred eyebrows that sizzled from another recent explosion. “Though I do wish you wouldn’t be so destructive in your attempts, I’m running out of hardware to use for our totems you know.”

Azmoth snickered, and Riven glanced over at the pile of scraps he’d created due to his many failures.

“Yes, well, I’ll pay you back.” Riven muttered under his breath, getting to work on the next project. “And thanks for all the help with teaching me. I appreciate it, and I won’t forget it. Azmoth, hammer please.”

***

Later that night: Genua’s tales of the changes on the outside of this event disturbed Riven. Why had he not heard of the expedited changes to the world quests? The news of Greed’s interference, a passage in the system notification passed on through the grapevine so to speak, particularly caused Gluttony to become irritable. Though the sin didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about it right now, so Riven didn’t push.

And to be certain he hadn’t been the only one out of the loop, none of his minions knew anything about it either. This meant that only a select few knew about the change in the expedited world quests, as well as the incoming armies that would array themselves for different factions across the planet.

Perhaps news of the world quests being reduced from 5 to 3 years would come to the rest of Panu later - when the armies selected by Elysium actually arrived?

Wasn’t there enough killing already?

Apparently not, according to Elysium. For whatever reason, Riven and his sister - along with three others on the planet if the “x5” remark on its notification was accurate - had become prime candidates for Elysium’s intended ‘ascension’.

Whatever the fuck that meant. Though Genua said it had to deal with an abstract concept, rather than actually ascending into something one could see on a status page.

What was even more irritating was that Riven had been relatively certain of his ability to wipe the floor with anything and everything on Panu prior until now, but if Elysium was actively going out of its way to make things challenging for him so that he and the others would be pushed to their limits…

He sighed. For all he knew, he wasn’t going to be the one that came out of this. Because although the stakes had been raised, his failed opportunity for ascension - should that come to pass - would be another’s opportunity that had been grasped. From what Genua told him, in the words of the bishops she’d spoken with, his death would grant boons of fate to the killers. They would essentially be stealing the power of his fate for themselves.

It was all a bit irritating to think about, considering he still didn’t understand what ‘fate’ even was as this was the first time he’d been hearing about it as a real concept that influenced the things around him. Or, perhaps, they’d just been babbling nonsense.

“You’re worrying far too much about things that don’t matter.” Gluttony whispered into Riven’s head. “Whatever it is that comes against us, we will prevail. We will devour all that oppose our path.”

Riven absentmindedly stroked Fay’s long white hair while she remained lightly snoring in the crook of his arm, her warm bare body pushing up against his on the opposite side of where Athela lay mumbling in her sleep in a sprawled face-down position.

He looked over at the arshakai, chuckling to himself while Athela drooled into a pillow. She always liked to cuddle while she was awake or dozing off, but nearly every time she ended up being a bed-hog after falling asleep; taking up half the god damned mattress while unknowingly pushing himself and Fay off to the side.

Fay on the other hand was far more clingy as she slept, but not in a bad way. Whenever he’d rearrange himself, he’d find that she almost gravitated to him. She’d even wake up if she didn’t feel his touch, using him as a body pillow the majority of the nights they slept together.

“I wonder what the purpose of all this is…” Riven wondered absentmindedly, his gaze drifting down to where Genua was sitting nearby. “This system… Elysium… Why would it care whether or not people grow in power? What’s the point? What does it get out of it? And why does it prioritize some people and not others?”

Genua stopped sipping on her tea, looking out the window, and sighed. "I'm not one for philosophy, so I'm afraid that those questions will have to be answered on your own Riven. Anyways I'm going to bed, good night. And thanks for the chat."