CHAPTER 339 – TELEPORTATION IDEAS
Tom woke in the morning in a good mood. Somehow, he even managed to not react to the spear that smacked into his shoulder at a level that he would judge to be slightly less than a hammer blow back on earth. Despite his higher vitality, it was going to leave a bruise.
“Sorry Tom,” Rahmat called out from over ten metres away. “You weren’t responding to the lighter taps.”
His head felt heavy courtesy of the exhaustion from the frequent True Dreams, and it took him a moment to process what his senses were reporting. Nobody was anywhere near him.
He looked up to see them all packed and ready to head off. They stood in a crowd with Rahmat being closest to him. “What’s with that…” he gestured at them.
“It’s your new domain,” Michael clarified for him. “When we just had to contend with a spear thrust or Spark, t didn’t matter too much if you hit us. Your domain is a different thing a hundred kilogram war hammer smacking me is not something I want to experience.”
“A what?” he asked amused. “That never happened.”
“That might be Tom, but we all have overly active imaginations.”
With a grin, stone swarmed around him, and in moments a war hammer appeared. He waved languidly, and it flew way too fast for something that was so large and heavy. It felt like it teleported five metres, before it paused, hovering next to a tree. Then, like someone was wielding it the weapon slammed into the trunk at about chest height. A head sized dint was left in the bark and wood.
“If that is the best you can do I wouldn’t have worried. In my imagination, the hammer was bigger,” Michael joked. “If I knew it was so small, I totally would have shaken you awake.”
Tom laughed along with everyone else.
Thor, as always came forward to help rollup his bedroll. “You’re in a good mood.”
“I had another undirected dream where there was nothing but static. I’m sure the skill is breaking something and I can’t wait to find out what.”
“The dragon?”
Tom snorted at the suggestion. “I can hope, but it could be anything. It’s probably something unexciting, like the insect champion.”
“Hurting it would still be a win.” Thor told him.
“True, but those two are best case. There’s always the risk that it’s something like the trial spirit. If it’s that there is a good chance it’ll end badly.”
“But if it is, you can’t be blamed for something beyond your control.”
Tom shrugged. That was something he didn’t know the answer to, but nor had he ever heard of a trial spirit being vulnerable. Then again, he also had no experience with what a once a day tier nine spell could achieve if it bashed against a barrier for days or weeks. He imagined it was a lot, which meant even an outlandish concept, like it: extracting information from a trial spirit was not out of the question.
Everlyn brought over food, and he ate the offered pair of breakfast burritos. Then they split into three groups. He did his role as a tank. He would taunt the mutated beasts and occasionally cripple them before handing them off to the others to defeat.
There were no dangerous bosses in the area they were fighting or alternatively each of the groups had grown better at eliminating the stronger monsters. It wasn’t until their mid-morning break that they came back together.
Harry stalked straight over to him a determined look on his face.
Tom wondered about the expression, and why Harry wanted him. He guessed it was probably some form of theory crafting. “How can I help you?”
The ritualist said nothing for a moment and instead patted the golem that was next to him. “This gave me an idea.” He then produced a fist sized crystal with complex writing all over it.
“What’s that?” Tom asked, accepting the bait.
“This Tom.” Harry held it up to the light like he was professionally assessing the quality of a gem. “Is one of the rewards from humanity’s balance box.”
“The mana crystal?”
“Yes. Did you know that there are thirty-two of them?”
“I recall the number being something like that.”
“Do you also know there are twenty-six humans and six wador.”
“And six chosen, a giant and an inventor! What’s your point?”
“I think these were intended to be the basis of a personal teleport artefact.”
“But there aren’t enough of them.”
“I disagree. There’s exactly the right number, every single human and wador can get one. The giant and inventor are going to be too large for something like this to work on and the chosen won’t be part of the final battle.”
“We don’t know that.”
Harry smiled. “I think we do. And I’m confident you understand that too. They will not support us while we kill other sapients.”
Tom knew what he said was the truth. No matter how he might try to twist it or wish it otherwise, the chosen would not help against the dragon. They did not care about vagaries like right and wrong or terror races versus non terror races. To them there was only a sapient classification, and all sapience was worth preserving. “It still doesn’t explain why there’s only thirty-two. Vidja lost three people. If your theory’s right shouldn’t there have been thirty-five”
Harry shrugged at that. “I’m just glad there’s not thirty, which would mean more of us would be doomed to die. Seriously, who knows what GODs can forecast. Predicting losses, I would expect to be a lower end oracle ability. Especially if it was a statistical like prediction where they didn’t know who specifically died. ”
“And I assume you know how to turn these into teleportation solutions.”
The ritualist shook his head. “Not yet, but I have some ideas.” He patted the golem again. “What we did with the golem helped me form the baseline of a concept.” He coughed. “And about forty skill points to unlock the ritual.”
“So you’ve got a ritual, but still haven’t cracked how to get it working with the mana crystals?”
There was an annoyed nod. “I have a ritual that I can minimise to get on the plate. And it’ll work. It even has a manual trigger and a fifty millisecond response time to let you control things and bait out breaths.”
Tom raised an eyebrow at how he was talking. “And the problem.”
“It’s not powerful enough. It only moves you about five metres. That’s a great tool against most opponents, especially as it has a recharge that would make it reusable every second day. It would become a proper lifesaving artefact. but against the dragon?” Harry frowned, helplessly.
Tom remembered the destruction the dragon had left when it had destroyed those massive temples. “I see. That’s nowhere near enough.”
“Hence my issue. I can’t supercharge it sufficiently.”
“Aren’t they recharging mana crystals. If we set up the ritual now and by the time we get to the last zone, they’ll have so much energy that range will be like three kilometres.”
Harry shook his head furiously. “No. If we do that, they’ll go boom. My problem is that it feels like this should work and if it does our major headache in preparing for the dragon goes away.”
“I’m not a crafter. Why would you think I could help.”
“Because of your golem and a trick you might have learnt from the Intelligence that helps upgrades things, of course.”
Stolen story; please report.
“A couple of interactions and guided crafting sessions can’t replace a decade of dedication. I’m not sure coming to me was the best choice.”
“It’s not just on you Tom. I’m talking to everyone in the hope one person might be able to help. My question for you is do you have a method I could concentrate more power with? Did the intelligence teach you something like that?”
Tom thought about all of his sessions and the specific methods he had applied to fix the broken components and shook his head. Then he remembered Maher and the artefacts he could make. They basically did what Harry was aiming for. “Chat with Maher. He might have some ideas.”
“I’ve already sent him a letter. This was more about you. I was wondering if you knew anything. I don’t need you of all people to help with networking.” He reduced the impact of the barbed comment with a wink. It was kind of in jest.
“Nope, can’t help you then. I’ve got no technical skills that can help. Sorry but to change topics. About the other balancing box materials, we got…”
“What about them?”
“Are we investigating their properties and working out how to use them or is that all dependent on the inventor?.”
“Of course we are. Michael and Keikain took the lead on it. On the items we have access to. The ones from the chosen and Vidja boxes, they’ve already carried out experiments to start stress testing the materials. They’ve also written up a nice summary with proposed use.”
“Is it digital or paper? Can I see it?”
Tom felt something being sent to him and he stepped into the system room and looked up at the wall.
Summary of Balancing Box Contents and forecasted use.
Giant’s Box
Single use Precognition Blocker – To be used in Spear – Status: to be replaced. Estimated Cost 30 million and three days of dedicated fate use and auction monitoring.
Wador’s Box
* Channelled Spear Launching Skill – Intended for the Giant’s use.
* Precognition Avoidance Wood Oil – To be used on Spear.
Chosen’s Box
* 24 tendons – Key Component of Slingshots.
* 3 Enchantments to impart the skill: Triple Speed on Selected Weapon – To be applied to enhance the Spear Launcher and 2 sling shots.
* 4 Affinity stones to improve the skill: Extraordinary Phase Slingshot – The four best slingshot uses will receive this. Merit assessment to be based on agility attribute unless they have additional skills to synergise with the weapon.
Humans Box
* A ton of metal – This is definitely required for the Spear and will probably also be used in the launcher. There is an argument that slingshot ammo could also be created from this material as well. Feasibility will need to be explored, and it obviously depends on volume left after the first two applications.
* Expanding Tree branch – The Spear Launcher will be made of this. The size changing property is presumed to be required for portability and to keep the weapon hidden. The Spear itself is also likely to be constructed from this wood.
* 32 Reuseable Mana Crystals – Based on numbers and power levels this is most likely the solution to teleportation. If that doesn’t work, they may be repurposed for one shot Sling Shot Ammo. Through this seems suboptimal.
* 12 Affinity Stones to boost skill Spatial Instability – This is clearly related to the teleportation required to evade dragon breath. Expected use will be to aid humans / the wador individual who lacks their own teleportation skill. Extra investigation is needed.
* 4 Trait Stones that grant five percent to Strength – There is an argument that all of these were intended for the Giant. This will not be happening. Instead, it is earmarked for one of the group of Rahmat, Usko, Everlyn, Puma and Thor as they are deemed the humans amongst us more likely to benefit from the additional strength.
Inventor
* Unknown, but we expect something small to cover one or more of the following niches. Defensive gear, or components for the Spear, Launcher, or Teleport solution.
Reading through the list, Tom agreed with it. Until they found out what the Inventor had, they wouldn’t be able to finalise the build, but their guesses seemed pretty accurate to him.
He returned to the real world and chattered until it was time to continue gaining quest credit. Everlyn, after having checked progress made the executive decision to reduce the group number to two. Tom immediately took advantage of the opportunity and split the rest of the day between napping and fighting.
The fights thankfully remained unchallenging and there were no True Dreams or messages from Selena to spice things up. The latter had kind of been expected. At best, given the time delays, the wador might have convinced the inventor to join them, but it would be days until they back tracked far enough to reconnect with Selena.
Dinner was a hardy stew that was going to take over an hour to cook and while they waited they played cards. Harry lost most hands with his traditional over aggressive play and out of control bluffing. It was a good evening and with a smile on his face; he settled down to sleep.
The True Dream swept him up at some point in the middle of the night.
Once more, it was more glorious nothingness. Tom giggled as he waited unable to sense a thing. Mentally he spun around, jumped and danced and then after the usual time period the dream broke apart.
They repeated the routine from the previous day. He napped and there were no dreams or communication to note and they reached the exit they were targeting, with all of them having the required number of kills.
One by one they went into their systems and returned having increased their rank to twenty-six or seven like they had all agreed.
The fact everyone had sufficient experience to reach the targeted rank did not surprise him at all. If he included his expected rewards in this zone with the previous results, he was looking at well over two million experience, which, on his calculations, was all they needed to upgrade. The issue was whether in this next layer they would get the two point eight million required to keep up with the monsters as they went into the second last layer.
Toni returned from her system room. She had bumped herself up to twenty-seven and had almost fifty percent more mana than he did. He was about to close some of the gap, but not all of it.
Without any fuss, he stepped into the system room and studied the writing on the wall.
Congratulation for completing the quest – Infected Beasts.
Flat experience is granted for killing the first 1000 beasts with minor experience awarded for kills beyond that level.
Experience awarded 901,207.
Tom smiled as he read those numbers. He had got twelve hundred and seven experience for the hundred or so extra beasts that he had killed above his quota.
His grin broadened as he did the maths.
The more powerful version of wasps had been earning more per kill than rank thirty threats. They had been rank four or there abouts and it was ridiculous that they had earned a similar amount to these later far stronger monsters. Trials could definitely do weird things with experience calculations.
Anyway, he was not here to waste time, and he already knew what he wanted. The upgrades would be unchanged from previously. From now on, his levels would be biased toward magic and not his physical abilities.
“Buy the same as last time and show attributes.” He ordered.
Classes Level – Sixty-Six
Lightning Tank: 29 (+4) - Expert
Elemental Summoner: 37 (+8) – Expert
Breadth of Serendipity: 0 – Legendary
Attributes
Strength: 197 (+12 Class, +6 Title: Strength Spring, +9 Title: Tripled Class)—Rank 24 (+4)
Vitality: 215 (+12 Class, +12 Title: Vitality fount)—Rank 26 (+3)
Agility: 196 (+24 Trait: Fates Agility, +3 Title: Tripled Class)—Rank 23 (+3)
Magic: 251 (+48 Class, -4 Trait: Fates Agility) —Rank 30 (+6)
Fate: 303 (+24 Trait: Fates Agility, +12 Title: Competition Shaker (I))
Mana Pool: Magic * 2 = 502
Tom smiled as he read the details. This latest burst of levels had pushed his mana up to five hundred. The progress felt great. He remembered when every point of mana was precious. It still was, but when you had five hundred in total, a single individual point didn’t feel as valuable as it once had.
With the job done, he returned to the real world and then collectively they went down the passage, through the zone doors and up to a safe room. There was a marked pause as each person spent considerably longer in the system room than usual. They were clearly examining the quest they had been given. Having already seen the one that Selena’s team had received, he waited patiently and understood the cause of the slight delay. This time, there was a lot to read through.
Eventually it was his turn, and he jumped into the system room and checked the quest.
The remaining zones have a more complicated quest system than the earlier ones. To complete the zone, global quests need to be satisfied along with personal ones.
He skipped over that bit having already read the same blurb via his dream with Maher and he focused on the key components.
Due to the war between the surface kingdoms and the underground dwellers, all exits of this zone have been locked. To open an exit both global and personal requirements must be met.
Global Requirements.
Requirement 1: Craft the Master Barrier Breaking gem.
This object must be present within the zone for any exit doors to function. The artefact can be created in the master forge, providing the following items are available.
* Master Barrie Breaker Gem blueprint – Can be located in various places where knowledge is collected.
* A wyvern’s heart.
* Half a kilogram of energised black diorite.
* Four wifflo beast cores.
* A five hundred capacity mana crystal.
Requirement 2: Align Power Conduit Flows
There are four points of power, and they need to have the same energy type channelled through them to enable the Master Barrier Gem to unlock the zone. All the species that make up the underground dwellers channel wind magic as a near religious belief as wind lets them circulate air and prevents the bad gases from accumulating and killing them. The surface kingdoms,s on the other hand focus on channelling fertility magic to maximise their crop yields.
Personal Requirements
Gain a physical key and a magical key to open a personal portal at an exit for you to use. The keys will be consumed on use and may be sourced from the following places;
* Crafted from blueprints if you can find one and the required materials.
* Physical keys gifted from the treasury of the surface kingdoms based off a merit assignment.
* Magical keys can be gained by making contributions to the underground clans.
* Generated by the system as a reward for a sufficient contribution of monster kills.
Note: The members of both the surface kingdoms and underground dwellers are not considered to be monsters. They have a facade of sapience, and no system contribution will be granted for slaying them.
This quest can be completed completely by diplomacy, genocide or anything in between.
Tom stared at that final point. Something told him that diplomacy was going to be their fastest ticket through the zone. He wondered whether social silence would help or hinder.