They managed to walk a day and a night before the rain started. It wasn’t a storm nearly as bad as the last one, but it was enough that they took shelter in an old barn off the side of the road, rather than continuing through the rain or trying to set up their tents, even with rain covers. The barn was mostly meant for storing equipment, it seemed, although Jeremy figured most of it was old and maybe being kept around for parts or something, because the doors had not been locked and everything looked dusty.
Caleb stood in the doorway with his arms crossed. Jeremy joined him in looking out over the wind blowing the rain and the wheat around. He was surprised it had not been harvested yet, especially considering all the issues surrounding food.
“We should try to get a car in the next town,” Caleb said. “That way we don’t keep getting stuck like this.”
“With what credit?” Jeremy frowned. “None of us have income right now. The cash we have on hand is barely enough for a down payment, let alone just buying a car outright. Anything we could get for…what do we have, like, $1200…is not going to be reliable anyway.”
Caleb sighed, sounding incredibly put-upon.
“Hey, are you guys hungry?” Caleb called from within the depths of the barn. Jeremy certainly was, so he turned back to go join Zanie and Hazel.
As he did, he patted Caleb on the shoulder and said, “Besides all the walking is good conditioning. We’re probably in the best shape we’ve been in for years.”
Caleb grumbled and followed after him. As they moved away from the door, the ozone from the storm and cloying scent of hay being whipped around by the wind gave way to the dry, dusty smell of old timber and forgotten places. There was a light bulb hanging above a workspace which might have once upon a time been used to illuminate the area when someone was making repairs to the farm equipment, but it no longer worked.
Hazel had a camping lantern though, which illuminated the space pretty well since everything was dim and shadowy given the dark storm. He and Zanie had cleared a little space on the floor of dust and debris for the most part and were setting out the meal. Hazel also had been the provider of food as they traveled for the past day or so. Right now, he had pulled out two each of canned chicken, canned corn, and instant, microwave rice.
They had no microwave, obviously, but Zanie was a literal heat source if she wanted to be. As Caleb and Jeremy sat with them, she held her hands over one of the packs of rice to cook it. The other, which she had already finished, let out a curl of steam when Hazel peeled back the plastic and set it in the center of their circle.
It had taken Zanie a couple of tries to be able to successfully heat the rice. The canned chicken and corn were easy because it did not matter if the metal got indiscriminately hot as well but had to be more careful about the rice. The little plastic tubs it came in were not designed to go into the oven instead of the microwave, for instance. So, she had to concentrate on making sure she did not melt the plastic into the rice the way she did the first time she tried.
“How come you don’t have a car, Hazel?” Caleb asks. Which was a fair point. He seemed to have a plethora of other things, from rations to camping equipment, provided by the government. The canned chicken and things were actually something he had picked up along the way, according to him because he disliked the mountain of MRE’s he’d been provided along with his contract and security clearance.
“I cannot drive,” Hazel answered simply.
Caleb put his face in his hands and shook his head. Jeremy chuckled and pulled one of the piping hot cans of chicken toward him with one of the forks set out and began spooning some of it into his bowl. Then a thought occurred to him.
“Hazel, do you have any extra mana crystals in your supplies?” he asked.
“No,” he shook his head apologetically, “I do not. Our enchanter has a supply of them, so if we are not able to find any soon, I can always contact her. But really I do need to find another dungeon anyway and it would be useful to understand where mana crystals might be located in this world by searching for them.”
Jeremy frowned. Hazel was of course here on a research mission, like some kind of anthropologist entering a new world, but Jeremy was more worried about trying to get this enchantment done quickly now that he’d had the idea and realized it could be so helpful for letting people navigate - and perhaps even survive – their new reality. They were still following the stripped utility poles and who knew how long the slimes had been eating at them or it their path would even lead them to a dungeon.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Once the rain let up and they could continue on their way, Jeremy would give it another day before asking Hazel to see if he could procure a crystal or two from the enchanter. He already had the small crystal from the nightmare dungeon that could probably be used for storing data, he just needed one that came filled with mana to power the enchantment.
“I’ve been wondering if we are actually heading toward anything useful, in the first place.” Caleb said as he grabbed his own fork and bowl. “I mean, if there is a dungeon at the end of these utility poles, wouldn’t we have run into more slimes that were coming out of it?”
“Not necessarily,” Jeremy said, moving onto one of the cans of corn to add that to his bowl. “The batch of slimes we took care of already ate all the power lines, so there isn’t any reason for them to be coming here.”
“That’s true,” Caleb agreed. They all filled their bowls in relative silence after that, just listening to the rain drumming on the roof overhead. There were surprisingly few leaks and the inside remained dusty and humid.
“So how exactly would we go about splitting up the scan enchantment in order to make it feasible to do at our level?” Jeremy asked as he scraped the last bit of rice from his bowl. If they were going to be stuck here for a little while until the rain let up, he could start planning out exactly how he was going to do that.
“To be quite frank, I have no idea.” Hazel told him. “For one, I am not an enchanter. While I understand the concepts and can do basic enchantments, the creative and finicky process of more complex or multi-step enchantments eludes me. And secondly, I don’t understand the script that the lovely Zanie, who is far more intelligent than I, has created in order to say.”
Zanie grinned down into her bowl and shook her head, “I’ll accept that compliment, thanks. But it’s just a different type of thinking. If you understood how to code, you wouldn’t say that.”
Hazel hummed as if he disagreed.
“If you tell me a little more about enchanting, I can experiment with splitting it up myself.” Zanie said.
“Yes, I think it would be a good idea for you all to learn just simple basic enchanting if you are going to try to create the scan one successfully.” Hazel set his empty bowl to the side and glanced around. “Usually, we have children begin with simple things such as fire starters.”
His eyes drifted around the barn, from the various pieces of equipment to the few hand tools, to the smattering of random junk and bins of nuts and bolts in the workspace. His eyes landed on a number of scrap pieces of 2x4 boards that were obviously leftovers from some kind of project. He narrowed his eyes at them and shook his head.
“So, the actual process of enchanting is to simply carve the runes into an object while imbuing the carvings with mana. It’s an intentional and mindful practice,” he explained. “Using wood to make fire starters is not exactly ideal, but I doubt any of you have metal working tools.”
Definitely not, but they at least all had a knife of some variety at this point. Jeremy climbed to his feet with a groan and feigned kicking Caleb when he called him an old man, then went over and picked up one of the boards. He smoothed his hand over it.
“So, we just need to carve the enchantment runes and then runes for making the fire?” He asked.
“Yes.”
That sounded simple enough. Jeremy picked up two more boards and brough them over for Zanie and Caleb to try it out if they wanted. Hazel gathered up their bowls and utensils and went out to the door to wash them out with a combination of summoning water, using the rain, and a little travel-sized dish soap. Caleb pulled the enchanting runes up on his phone and set it in the middle of their circle so they could all see and they bent over their boards to carve them.
Jeremy was at an advantage, because he could literally see his mana going into the runes as he scratched at the wood with his kabar. By the time he had finished carving, the storm had petered out into a light rain and Hazel was propped up against one of the poles supporting the structure of the barn with his eyes closed as though he was taking a nap.
With the enchantment runes completed, Jeremy had to figure out exactly what he wanted to do for the fire runes. Obviously, he would need to summon fire, but unless he wanted the flame to sit directly on top of the wood and consume all his hard work, he needed to direct it elsewhere. This was probably why Hazel said using wood for this was not ideal.
He could use the project rune that he used when sending concentrated mana though an enemy as a weapon. He told Zanie and Caleb this as they carved away. Zanie was being much more meticulous about her carving, apparently taking Hazel’s advice that it was a mindful practice seriously. Caleb’s piece, as always, looked like hasty chicken scratch. Jeremy figured then and there that he was probably not the makings of a powerful enchanter.
“Done!” Caleb announced first.
Hazel opened his eyes and looked at the board when Caleb presented it to him. His face remained completely neutral. “Go ahead and feed it some mana to see if it worked.”
Caleb turned back around to set the board in front of himself, then held his hand over it, a look of excitement in his eyes. Tendrils of the iridescent flow of concentrated mana moved from his hand into the board, but nothing happened. Jeremy watched as the mana spilled and jumped over some places and just generally did not flow through the enchantment well. Caleb’s face dropped into an expression of abject disappointment.
“Maybe if you hadn’t rushed, it would have worked.” Zanie went back to her own enchantment after watching his do nothing for a few seconds. “It’s a finnicky process, remember?”
Caleb stuck his tongue out at her, and even though she was not looking, she rolled her eyes. Jeremy only had one little bit of the projectile rune to finish, which he did quickly.
“My turn to try,” he pushed imaginary sleeves up his arms and held his hands over the board.