“I’m not seeing anything different from before,” I informed Lisa. Speaking aloud wasn’t strictly necessary, but I’d found it helped keep me sane after spending so long alone.
Lisa’s avatar nodded. “That makes sense. It is exceedingly difficult to alter a rift with an active instance.”
“You think that’s what’s happening?” I asked as I removed my hand from the altar and turned toward the screen. “Someone is trying to alter the rift?”
“It’s possible,” my Interface Assistant replied. Her voice was coming from the mounted display where her avatar was currently displayed. “It may also be routine maintenance to prevent the rift from tiering up or breaking. If the rift doesn’t get a lot of traffic, it makes sense that whoever guards it would occasionally siphon the excess mana to prevent such occurrences.”
I remembered doing something similar with the newly formed rifts on Earth right after the reintegration really kicked off. I’d come across a few that were occupied at the time, and I found it far easier to simply wait for the delvers to leave than to try to do anything with them inside.
It wasn’t impossible to drain or add mana to an occupied rift, but it was difficult. There was also a definite limit to how much a rift could be artificially bolstered or weakened with someone inside. I’d never had a reason to test the limits, but my training indicated it was only a stage or two within the same tier.
If someone was trying to do something to this rift, my presence would certainly complicate things. They’d also undoubtedly know someone was inside the rift, which meant whoever put me here probably knew that I was still alive.
“Well, at least they can’t get to me in here,” I muttered to myself.
Though my connection implied nothing had changed, I still felt the urge to explore the rift instead of finishing my original task of processing my kills. However, I ruthlessly squashed the impulse and forced myself to finish my work before indulging my curiosity.
Discipline was important, especially now that I had a lot of material to craft with.
My goal was to keep chipping away at the regular rift beasts until I reached High-Tier Eight. At that point, I’d test my weapons against the weakest faction creatures.
I hoped that the creatures weren’t too resilient. If they were, it was going to take me a lot longer to escape from the rift.
Though I was working with Tier Nine materials, the weapons and talismans I was crafting were not true Tier Nine items. Because I was personally only capable of infusing Tier Eight mana into my creations, the items I crafted would naturally be weaker than true Tier Nine creations.
That meant that it was basically a toss-up on whether or not the items would be effective against the stronger mobs.
If only they were weaker, I silently lamented.
But that didn’t really matter. It was what it was. I just needed to adapt and find a way to defeat the challenge.
Once I finished processing the last of my kills, I Transmuted the offal into a clay-like substance and stored it in the ring I’d dedicated to crafting materials.
Transmuted materials never worked as well as those that were fully natural, but they worked well enough for consumable talismans, especially if the talismans could be overcharged.
It was a matter of quantity over quality in this case.
“Okay, I’m too curious to put it off any longer,” I said, glancing at the display still showing Lisa’s avatar. She usually kept it there whenever I was in the safe room.
“Good. I’m a bit curious, myself,” Lisa replied with an eager look in her eyes.
I waved my hand and stored the furniture and other items in their designated ring, leaving the room empty aside from the altar.
I cast Stealth before exiting the safe room. The Arcane spell worked far better than the [Invisibility] talisman I’d crafted in the dungeon. Given how under-leveled I was for the setting, I suspected it was the only reason I’d been as successful as I was.
I didn’t notice any changes when I exited the room, aside from a barely perceivable reduction in ambient mana. It was a small thing, and I doubted it impacted anything in particular.
Still, it was something.
Confident in my spell’s ability to hide me, I quickly made my way to the closest mob settlement, not bothering to teleport. It would have been a waste of mana.
I’d been surprised at how close the goboles were when I initially found them. The entrance to their underground village was only about half a mile away from the safe room, which wasn’t far at all, given the size of the rift and how fast I could move.
I had to be a little more careful when I entered the underground tunnels since they were littered with deadly traps. I also had to be cautious around the goboles since, even if the creatures couldn’t see, hear, or smell me, being too close was often enough to alert them of my presence.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Carefully making my way through the tunnels, I noted that none of the traps had changed since my last visit. That wasn’t too unusual, given that the instance never truly reset. I also tried to scout each faction at least every few days, so it hadn’t been too long since my last visit.
Inspect informed me that the goboles still ranged from level eighty-seven to eighty-nine, and still had a variety of affinities. As far as I could tell, nothing significant had changed.
There did seem to be slightly fewer goboles loitering around outside the shanty village than normal, and those who were hanging out seemed a bit less energetic than usual. But since their numbers had never been really consistent, I wasn’t confident the change had anything to do with the weird stream of mana.
After returning to the surface, I headed to the susorc stronghold. The boar-looking humanoids didn’t seem afflicted by any kind of lethargy, nor did I notice any real reduction in their numbers. In fact, the mobs were aggressively preparing for another raid as I watched from a safe distance.
I checked the simians and avemons before finally calling it quits, not bothering with the underwater lacusins. Neither of the last two groups I checked showed any signs of influence or change, so I put the weird mana fluctuation out of my mind and headed home.
I’d already wasted enough time wandering around the rift, and I had crafting to do.
----------------------------------------
Months passed, and then years.
My weapons continued to get better as I learned to compensate for my shortcomings during the crafting process. Intent during imbuement was critical, but I’d found a way to impart my intent into reagents themselves, so when ambient mana was changed and channeled into my creations, they worked as desired.
Making a formation that would imbue the necessary mana into my crafted items over time was no easy task. I doubted many Enchanters had a need for such assistance since most tended to limit their crafting to their current tier.
There was a reason for such a limitation – manipulating higher-tier resources was hard, far harder than working with appropriately leveled materials. But I was pretty sure there was a saying about necessity being the mother of invention.
I removed a tray of loose beads from the largest of my imbuing formations. Because each of the small clay beads was enchanted to do the same thing, I found that imbuing several at the same time worked much better than doing it one at a time.
In fact, the new setup was more efficient and functional than trying to enchant each small bead by hand since I was able to automate most of the crafting process. Only embedding my intent into the reagents took actual effort, which made the process of creating a huge volume of explosive talismans far simpler than it was before.
And it wasn’t just explosive talismans. I had several other varieties as well. Each one took a separate set of formations to craft, but the effort there was fairly minimal, given how much of the process was already automated.
I found it a little amusing that I’d somehow come full circle in my fighting style.
The bead-shooter I designed to launch the deadly talismans was crafted similarly, though I only automated the mana imbuement portion to ensure it was a true Tier Nine weapon. That was important since every piece of the weapon influenced how strong an attack would be.
I’d gained my entire alternate level from crafting since figuring out a way to craft at a higher tier was worth quite a bit of experience. I didn’t even need Manatechnician or Researcher to reach my goal, though each still earned me a decent amount of experience as well.
“These should work nicely,” I said after examining the batch of bead-shaped talismans. “Once the rest are finished baking, I’ll test the lot against the goboles.”
“I have no doubt they’ll work beautifully,” Lisa commented from the screen behind the workstation where I’d sat the tray.
I looked up at the avatar and smiled. “I agree. They are true Tier Nine munitions. Given the enclosed space involved, they should be far more effective than what I was using before.”
“Perhaps they’ll even work against the boss?” Lisa asked with a playful smile.
I crossed my fingers. “Here’s hoping. It would be great to get rid of one of the bosses this early.”
“It’s been seventeen years. That’s not really early.”
I huffed out a mirthless chuckle. “We both know it is. If I wasn’t an Enchanter, it would have taken a century to get this far, even with my three affinities. Killing one or two of the weakest beasts at a time would have eventually gotten us here – if I didn’t die in the process – but now that we can set up kill zones and have some real oomph…”
“It is far more effective,” Lisa conceded. “However, I still maintain that seventeen years is far longer than most challengers would take. Then again, I assume most are not being forced into the rift at such a disadvantage.”
“Probably not,” I agreed as I moved to the next formation. I removed the finished items and checked them over before storing them in my ring. “Unless they are using the rift to assassinate more than just me. And considering who likely had access to this rift and how impossible it should be to survive with a full tier disadvantage, it was probably curated specifically to challenge Assassins.”
Not addressing my theory, Lisa asked, “Are you going to wait for the others to finish?”
I shook my head. “Nah. These two sets should be enough to test things. Fire and Ice. The interaction should be effective enough for now. I’ll test the others later.”
“I can practically feel your eagerness,” Lisa said with a smile. “You’d think after all this time, you’d have developed a little more patience.”
This time, my laugh was filled with amusement. “Not even a little! I don’t want to be stuck here any longer than I have to, and if this can help me defeat the bosses, then I want to know right away.” My smile faded as I released a heavy sigh. “I’m tired of being alone, Lisa,” I said. “I’m trying to stay focused and keep myself busy… and having you with me helps, but I need…”
I didn’t want to say interaction with real people because that would imply that Lisa wasn’t a person. And whether she was truly sapient or simply a very adaptable Mana Intelligence, she was a real person to me.
But I still felt the need for something more.
“I understand,” my Interface Assistant said kindly. “Humans are social creatures. You need contact with others like you, or at least those who are similar enough. I cannot fulfill that role.”
“I still appreciate you,” I said earnestly. I stepped closer to the display and focused on the avatar. “I’d probably be crazy right now without you.”
“I highly doubt that,” Lisa replied with a dismissive eye-roll. She was always very emotive in avatar form. “You are far more resilient than you give yourself credit for. But enough of that. I’m excited to see how effective these new talismans are. Maybe they’ll be strong enough for you to complete the challenges without tiering up.”
That was my hope. I really didn’t want to miss out on the eighth-floor trial rewards. If I had to do it to survive and escape, I would. But if there was a way to complete the challenge while still at Tier Eight, I’d do it.
“Well, I guess it’s about time we test these things out then,” I said with a grin. “Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” Lisa said with a nod.
I returned the nod before waving my hand and collecting my belongings. It was something I did every time I left the safe room since I didn’t trust the rift not to absorb my things if I wasn’t around.
Excited and hopeful, I cast Stealth and stepped through the open doorway.