Novels2Search
Modern Age Online
Chapter 174 – Deformulation and Magic Chairs

Chapter 174 – Deformulation and Magic Chairs

Kaleb slammed the door to his Workshop and laid his back against the door. He sighed as he rubbed his eyes and then his forehead. Jar-lock and Farrah had them discussing nonsense and procedure for the past two hours. Throughout that time, Kaleb had been thinking about the small vial in his pocket. He was sure that the talk had been productive, and they had discussed plenty of important topics. But he had been checked out for most of it. He had left the HLO to get away from the paperwork and procedure… also the rampant discrimination against the Mundane, and now he had to deal with it again. Of course, the beast called office work was easier to handle when you were running the business. But only in small doses.

“Fra-gmy-haps-fluffer-nattur…” sputtered a small voice from Kaleb's desk.

Moving his hand away from his eyes, Kaleb spotted Daivor asleep on his worktable. The little Builder Gnome was laying prone against the cold metal table, his hat askew and a small pile of drool collecting around his face. Kaleb winced at the sight and moved to pick up his small friend. But the gnome quickly sat up at his approach.

“Roy?!”

Kaleb paused before shaking his head. “The kid ain’t back yet. But Farrah has him on camera’s and his body-cam is still active.”

Daivor fixed his hat as he cursed. “Damn slow teenager. I want to know how well our new weapon deployment system worked. But, of course, he’s off playing Hero.”

“You reworked his arm dispensers?”

“From the ground up. We also forged him some new armor and boots?”

“Boots?”

Daivor grinned evilly and wagged a finger up at Kaleb. “Oh, no! I’m not telling you a thing about those. They’re the boy’s invention and he’s, understandably, proud of them.”

“You too, it seems.”

Kaleb took a seat at his worktable and reached into his pockets for the vial again. As he did, he looked around from the microscope he had ordered. The workshop was empty now. The Brutes and the Teens were all back home except for a small skeleton crew the Hangar had for security. Terrance and Marie were back with their families in Blue Bluff, and Kaleb’s workshop was left as a mess. He snorted as he gazed across both of their workstations. At least Terrance had tried to clean his small area. Marie was less fastidious.

“We need to tell the kids they can’t leave until they’ve cleaned up their areas.” He mentioned to Daivor as he placed the vial on his worktable.

The gnome froze as he spotted the glass tube with trace amounts of liquid in it. The orange fluid inside had pooled at the bottom, and Daivor immediately rushed over to get a better look. Kaleb found his scope and pulled it over as the gnome leaned down to examine the vial. He rubbed his beard as Kaleb got set up.

“It’s non-magical.”

“Yeah, Jar-lock tried to Identify it earlier. It’s some kind of drug that enhances strength for a short period.”

“That all it does?”

“To my knowledge. Also, I know that two doses of the stuff can kill you.”

“Potent.”

Kaleb nodded and got a sample slide ready to examine the liquid in the vial. But Daivor reached up and stopped him. Kaleb turned to regard the small gnome, who was looking up at him in confusion.

“What the hell are you going to do with the microscope?”

“I’m going to see if there is anything biological in the solution. It’s not much, but with my current equipment, it’s what I can do.”

“And if there’s nothing there, you’ll have wasted a portion of the liquid.”

Kaleb sat back in his chair and waved a hand at Daivor. “Then what do you suggest?”

“We need to break down the solution into its component parts.”

“I know that! But we don’t have the equipment for Deformulation and I can’t access the Mass-spec until tomorrow.”

“Why not?”

“Cause it’s at the school.”

“So break in.”

Kaleb gave the gnome a withering look and then sighed. “Farrah’s still on the drones and she’d spot me leaving. Then she’d tell the others, and they’d all pitch a fit about doing ‘something illegal’ or whatever.”

“Bah!” Daivor growled. “Ignoramuses always getting in the way of proper science.”

“Here, here!” Kaleb shouted back, raising an arm in solidarity.

But he was only half-joking. The others had already logged out for the night. Which meant he was going to be alone for a while. If anything, he’d could probably sneak over to the college and use their equipment with them being none-the-wiser. But it would also create problems if he broke into his new place of work. They probably had cameras or late-night security or something. If he was spotted or caught, he could kiss his new chemistry job goodbye and he’d probably be slapped with all sorts of fines. Not to mention if the HLO got wind of things.

Kaleb sighed and sat back in his chair. He glared at the vial as Daivor watched him. The small gnome had produced his pipe as blowing stacks of smoke into the air that dissipated before they hit the ceiling. Wondering if he should just can the science for now and head off to bed, a sudden thought struck Kaleb, and he jumped to his feet. Gripping the table with his hands, he stared into Daivor’s eyes.

“Is there a spell or something for Deformulation?”

The gnome shook his head and looked ready to say something. But then he stopped and tilted his head to the side as if listening to something. When he came back to himself, the little gnome was chewing on the end of his pipe in thought.

“I want to say no. But I think you might be on to something.”

“So a spell doesn’t exist, but magic could probably be used to complete the process, right? I mean, all we are doing is breaking down a liquid into its base parts and identifying them by the size and weight of molecules. There has to be a magic for that, right?”

Daivor continued chewing on the end of his pipe. Eventually, he jammed the small pipe in his pocket and threw an arm toward Kaleb. A silver whip lashed out at Kaleb’s shoulder and the gnome was flung onto him. The gnome got himself comfortable before kicking Kaleb in the shoulder and pointing at his workshop door.

“Mush! We need more information.”

Kaleb got up from his chair and walked to the door. “Where are we going?”

“Jar-lock moved his library downstairs, right?”

Kaleb grinned as he flung open his door and strode across the hangar floor. A few of the night guards and workers watched him and waved as he went. Kaleb returned the gesture and tried to remember some of the faces. It was mostly the insomniac lizards and the nocturnal Hunters who remained as night staff. But with only Kaleb logged into the game, any calls were diverted to police. If an emergency came through, he’d have to go. But that hadn’t happened yet.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Kaleb descended the stairs to the below ground floors and rushed down the hall. The second and third floors had been cleared of debris, but they hadn’t gotten around to using all the space yet. Kaleb ducked his head into various rooms as he walked. But the first floor was mostly player housing. When the others had a long weekend or some time off, they’d sleep down here. Two Gun and Claire’s room was nicely decked out while Abby and Jar-lock’s were fairly sparse. Just a bed, a nightstand, a backroom for showers. Vivienne, Mass, and D34d-I didn’t have rooms yet. Or at least none that they stayed in regularly.

Kaleb reached the end of the hallway and found the steps to the second floor. He descended those and ended up in an identical dark hallway. This one only had a few doors built into the walls. The first on his left was Jar-lock’s new library. He grinned to himself as he pushed open the wooden door and step inside… then immediately stopped.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Kaleb said in exasperation.

“The man has his priorities.” Daivor said.

Kaleb closed the library door behind him and glanced around. Above ground, the mage had barely four bookcases full of books and scrolls. But down here Jar-lock had, apparently, cast multiple spells on his new library. The ceiling was over twenty feet high above him and rows of books ran end to end on either side of him. Ahead of them was a small alcove around a fireplace. A comfy chair and a lone table sat before the fire, casting shadows upon the wooden bookshelves.

“THIS is what he spends his time on?” Kaleb questioned.

“I’m sure he says the same to himself whenever he walks into your workshop.”

Kaleb rolled his eyes and moved toward the alcove. It was small, but seemed to be the central point of Jar-lock’s library. All around it, tall shelves full of books and scrolls towered over him. He briefly wondered where the big mage had found all these books, but he set that aside for now. They needed to find what they were looking for.

“What are we looking for, exactly?”

“Books on degradation and decay. Maybe Necromancy or Nature based magic.” Daivor explained.

“Nature?”

“Breaking down organic matter is essential to nature. Recycling is a natural process in the forest and keeps various organisms alive.”

Kaleb nodded. “Then I say we go with that. I don’t want to be messing around with Necromancy.”

He gave a little shudder at the thought of zombies and then jumped as a wispy voice echoed in his ear.

“Quite an astute choice, sir. One of your nascent skill level would find the practice… difficult.”

Kaleb came down in a boxing stance as Daivor produced a wand. They both turned to look at the speaker and found a light-blue ephemeral humanoid floating in front of them. It was in the shape of a human male wearing a butler’s uniform. The free-floating apparition nodded at the pair of them and waved a gloved hand at the stacks of books.

“Master Jar has accumulated numerous tomes on the subject of Nature Magic. You can find them in rows D-17 to D-24 or would you prefer to peruse them in the chair? I can fetch them for you.”

Kaleb blinked as he almost stuck a hand out to see if the butler was real. Daivor smacked him on the side of the head and nodded politely at the ghostly servant.

“That would be helpful, thanks. We are looking for spells about breaking things down into their base components. So anything on that would be helpful.”

“Very good, sir. A moment, please.”

With that, the butler disappeared completely. Leaving a very confused Kaleb to stare into space.

“It’s an unseen servant tied to the library. Jar-lock has apparently been very busy behind the scenes.”

“No kidding.” Kaleb said as he moved to the chair. “We’ve got to step up our game, Daivor. The freaking magic-flinger is outshining us.”

Daivor scoffed but said nothing as Kaleb sat down. The small gnome jumped to the side table near the chair as Kaleb got comfortable. As soon as he did, a blue notification box popped in front of his eyes, and Kaleb wanted to swear.

Notice

You are currently seated on an Enhancement Nexus. This Nexus is calibrated specifically for [Knowledge Absorption.]

All pertinent Magical knowledge learned while seated at the Nexus will be retained easier.

Learning and retaining magical spells is easier while seated at your Nexus.

“Jar-lock, you broken bastard.” Kaleb whispered as he read the window and closed it. “He’s turned this damn chair into a Nexus Point to learn spells easier.”

“Smart.” said Daivor as he whipped himself over to the chair and closed his eyes. “Oh yeah! This baby is humming. We need a couple of these in the workshop.”

“A couple? Why not just one and we can calibrate them to what we need on the fly?”

“Ha! Nexuses don’t work like that. Once they are calibrated, it takes a great deal of power and time to switch them to something else. This one seems to be set for magical knowledge. But what if we had stools in the workshop for learning different skills? Robotics, Engineering, coding? Anything we wanted, really!”

Kaleb grinned at the excited gnome, but something tickled the back of his mind. “Would having that many Nexuses near each other be dangerous?”

“Extremely. We’d be lucky if we didn’t blow ourselves up. Even a lone Nexus is highly unstable. Why do you think Jar-lock built his down here?”

“Yeah, we’re not doing that.”

“Why not?!”

“Daivor, we already blow up our damn lab semi-regularly. Do you really want to add magic to that little mix?”

“Bah! Only fools kill themselves in their own lab explosions.”

“I would prefer fewer explosions all together.”

Daivor looked like he wanted to say more, but the butler ghost chose that moment to turn up again. Along with him were several floating books that the butler placed on the side table.

“Will that be all, gentleman?”

“Yes, thank you very much… uh…” Kaleb stopped awkwardly.

“I am Jeeves, sir. Your humble servant. And should you require anything else, you only need to ask.”

Kaleb nodded and Jeeves, the ghost butler, vanished into thin air again. Kaleb shivered at the sight and then grabbed for a book. The heavy tome looked old and weathered, but well cared for nonetheless. Its title was Decaying within The Natural World. Kaleb cracked the spine and turned to the first page as Daivor leaned against his shoulder. Kaleb started to read the first few lines of the book before something strange happened.

Kaleb blinked and felt his hands close the book a second later. He was in the middle of setting the book aside when he stopped himself and looked around. It felt like mere moments had passed, but in the darkness of the library, he couldn’t really tell. All he knew was that the book didn’t hold the answers he needed. Daivor tapped his arm impatiently.

“The next one, Doc.”

“What the fuck was that?”

“What?”

“That whole weird time dilation thing. I just opened the book and now I’m here.”

“Time Dilation? Boss, there was no dilation. You just skimmed the book and realized it wasn’t helpful. Now we can move on to the next one.”

Kaleb felt the rough fabric of the chair’s upholstery against his real hand. The red cloth felt rough to the touch and Kaleb briefly wondered how old the damn magic chair was. But he set that aside and cautiously reached out for the next book. Again, he opened the book, read the first line, and then found himself shutting the book again. He didn’t retain anything he had read, but he knew instinctually that the book held nothing for him.

Setting the book down, Kaleb rubbed his eyes and muttered to himself. “Oh yeah, Jar has some explaining to do about this damn chair.”

Daivor ignored him as he pointed toward the next book on the pile. “Yeah, yeah. Wizard built a helpful chair. Now take advantage of it and find what we are looking for.”

Kaleb chuckled. “Sure thing, boss.”