Ishrin disappeared into one of the rooms at the back of the guild and did not emerge for a long time. Melina had delivered the ingredients in record time, but time was ticking and slowly running out while Ishrin had to figure out how to replace a few of the more uncommon plants that weren’t available.
Eternia did have a similar ecology to Prima Luca – the planet he was currently in – but it only went as far as basic spiritual plants. More potent things were more magical, and magic drove evolution to diverge and diversify much faster than normal.
Still, there were only a finite number of macro-paths things could travel down, a finite number of elements even though their combinations were countless, and finding substitutes turned into a time consumer but not a deal breaker. Some of them he had even already encountered and harvested in the forest himself. By the time he had everything he needed, Goddard was still very dead but not too dead as to be impossible to resuscitate.
He emerged from the room late into the night. The guild was almost empty, but it wasn’t lost on what few patrons were there that he was the one involved with the death of a fellow adventurer of theirs. Things threatened to turn nasty for a moment, but then Goddard walked out of the room, confused but very much alive, defusing the situation.
Bringing dead people back to life was not impossible, of course. But it was hard. Very hard.
Nobody dared have any doubts about Ishrin’s power after seeing him return a man back to life in less than a day. As a Tier 1 mage.
They didn’t approach him either, which he was grateful for. He didn’t have the mental energy to deal with people right now. He simply walked out of the guild, instructing a clerk to notify Melina and telling the still confused Goddard to rest for a few days if he could. If he couldn’t… then it was his business. No refunds on second lives.
It was much later that Melina returned from her mission, and the two met at the pub by the walls. Lisette was not there. She had to cultivate, or so she claimed. Cultivation was an iffy thing, deeply personal, and everybody did it differently. Back in Eternia, there had been sects that tried to standardize the path to power for their followers, but the only thing they obtained – according to Ishrin – was that they crippled everyone in the same way, stunting their growth forever.
Ishrin explained the events of the day, to which Melina occasionally asked clarifications.
“How did you even get into that situation?” She asked in the end. Not a question about the actual causal chain, rather about the thought processes behind it. Ishrin patted himself on the back for catching the subtle difference.
It’s slowly coming back to me.
He thought about what to say very carefully. “I’m not used to having someone as… zealous as Liù protecting me. My mistake.”
“It’s okay, I guess. I can deal with this level of problems, believe me or not. It’s the multiversal stuff that really crosses the threshold for me.”
Ishrin laughed. “I bet. Gonna need a sword after this, though.”
“Shouldn’t you work on raising your tier?”
“Yes, but to do that I need materials. And to get materials I need to hunt for them.” He explained, using his fingers to punctuate the various points. “To hunt for them, I need a weapon. Liù doesn’t qualify. The last monster she killed, she also obliterated its core to utter dust. I need them intact.”
“I see.” Melina nodded. “I could give you the materials, you know?”
“I know. But I already am in your debt, and I don’t like being in anyone’s debt.”
“Ishrin—”
“Wait.” He stopped her. “I also need to get used to this… body. I can’t just speedrun tiers. It takes time, effort, discipline, and many other things to build a good foundation. I need to fight things, stretch my limits, and meditate on it.”
Melina raised an eyebrow. “Speedrun?”
“Move very quickly through.”
She shook her head. “You’re weak, Ishrin. The forest is dangerous.”
“I’m not suicidal. Listen, you want to help me? Come meet me tomorrow morning at the field outside the walls, the one between the orchard and the golden crop field. Bring a sword. I’ll show you a damn good ritual to make magic items.”
The next morning, a very curious Melina and a stoic Lisette were watching attentively as Ishrin laid out several items on the ground in a seemingly random fashion. Most of said items weren’t even magical, but when placed in the right locations, they seemed to resonate with the fabric of reality itself. At the center of it all, a smiling Ishrin felt rather proud of the way he managed to obtain a sword for free without making it sound like he was freeloading from the guild master of the city.
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The ritual was, to him, basic stuff but most people could not even begin to fathom the work that went into it, let alone perform it without killing themselves.
“Magic is just local hyperreality overwriting the rules of base reality. Magical items are just items that can do that passively, but it’s not the only way to do it. Think incantations, for instance. They are just words, but they bend reality, don’t they?” Ishrin explained.
“I… guess? That’s a bit reductive, isn’t it?” Melina said. She was perplexed, but she was not as quick to discount his words as she had been before. She was beginning to believe. Ishrin could work with that.
“Yes, I guess that’s fair. But the point still stands. Reality has some sort of… weak spots. Gaps where its hold on… whatever it is that we are made of is weaker. If you can find those gaps, and find the way to exploit them, then you don’t need mana to do it for you. Do you get it? Mekano used to call them ‘cheat codes’. They are like built-in shortcuts that we can use to our benefit.”
Ishrin chose not to mention the theory of simulation for ease of mind. He didn’t like that theory very much. Nor did he expand on what reality was actually made of, as that was mostly a speculation on his part, and he struggled to reconcile universal consciousness with all that he had seen after and including his encounter with a god.
“Wait. Those codes… weak spots. Did someone put them there?”
Ishrin smiled. Melina was quick, and Lisette too was wearing the face of someone who was beginning to string together a few things. He wondered what was going through her mind.
“That’s the question. Did someone create gravity? Matter? Energy? Who knows? It doesn’t matter. Mana already changes reality to an extent, I just happen to know other ways. They are more complicated, almost impossible to find unless someone has access to… say, artificial intelligence and supercomputers, but they exist.”
“Artificial computers?”
Ishrin shrugged. “I used to travel a lot. Magic is not all there is to the universe. Multiverse, I guess. Now watch, and please, don’t be startled by the voice of reality when it speaks.”
“The what???”
But Ishrin was not listening. He spoke a word of power, and the ritual activated. The sword, set on the ground at the center of the strange shape of lines, magical and mundane materials glowed briefly.
Ritual successful: Magic Pebble. This sword is now enchanted and can cast a weak magic projectile.
Then he did it again.
Ritual successful: Magic Pebble 2.
And again.
Ritual successful: Magic Pebble 3.
Ritual successful: Magic Pebble 4.
Ritual successful: Magic Pebble 5.
After he was done, he turned to the two awestruck women with a flourish and a grin.
“Well then, girls. Congratulations, you just witnessed a true ritual. Not the knockoff stuff I did with the magical materials. This is actual, reality bending stuff.”
His flourish was not the smoothest, as he was swaying a bit. To be safe, he decided to sit on a log and ponder about the meaning of a rotating frame of reference. The sword glowed a faint blue at the center of the nausea-induced rotation. Five whole layers of ritual magic superimposed onto it had resulted in a decent spell, at least to be used as long as he was still weak. Hopefully not too long.
“Are you okay?” Asked a concerned half-human, half-fox who also happened to be the most powerful person in the city.
Ishrin nodded. “Yes, just lightheaded from imposing my will on the universe. I’m going to be weakened for a while.”
Then a raven-haired, red-eyed face hovered mere centimeters from his own. “I don’t feel your mana, Ishrin.” She still spoke in a deadpan voice, but Ishrin could almost discern that she was looking concerned.
“Side effect.” He waved her worry away. “Rituals like this don’t need mana, but they make all mana flee away from them and whoever casts them. We get too ‘real’, for a while. It will come back.”
“Oh. The area is a mana void as well.”
“Can be used in battle, if necessary. Now, let me show you what the sword does.”
Magic pebble was a simple spell. You swung the sword in an arc, and it released a projectile at the farthest point of said arc, going in a straight line for several dozen meters until it either dissipated into nothingness (it did not consume mana, therefore it did not return into ambient mana) or hit something.
The tree he used as test practice exploded in a shower of splinters and wood chippings, utterly obliterated. Ishrin’s arm ached a bit: using the sword was like trying to cut through molasses instead of air. But it was a very good start. Must have been equivalent to Tier 3 at the very least. His Tier 3, also known as Tier 5 to everyone watching.
He fell back into lecture mode, a thing he was enjoying very much.
“There is a debate about where the kinetic energy of the bolt comes from,” he said to a stunned audience, taking great pleasure at seeing their faces.
“W- sorry what?”
“Shooting the projectile doesn’t consume any mana, neither from my core nor from the air. There’s been much debate about the origin of the energy it very clearly transfers to whatever it hits.” The groan of the rest of the tree falling over punctuated the statement. “But so far nobody knows.”
“I don’t even know what to say. You made a Tier 5 weapon, Ishrin. In less than a hour!” Melina was almost yelling.
Ishrin chose to shrug theatrically despite knowing full well it would irritate the woman.
“I guess. But where does it take the energy from, I wonder?”
“If it really is a heaven-defying thing like you called it, then perhaps it really comes from nothing.”
“I called it cheat code, but sure. You can call it that.”
“Fascinating. Can you enchant my gear as well?” Lisette asked.
“Maybe. Perhaps once we get to know each other, how about that?” He said with a wink.
To which she blushed.
“S-sorry! You have to forgive her.” Melina said, coming to her rescue. “Lisette, apologize.”
“No need.” Ishrin said with a chuckle. “I like how direct she is. Much less… trouble than many people who seem to enjoy trying to confuse me. You know, I used to summon an orator demon to deal with them, back in the day.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Anyway. Plans for the day? I have to hunt for stuff. You gonna come?”
“Can’t. Both Lisette and I have to go back to the volcano. I hope you won’t miss us too much.” She winked.
Ishrin felt his face heat up.
How the tables turn.
He smiled, playing it cool. He had a wife, after all.
“Nope. Don’t worry about me.”
“Alright, then.”
Then they were off.
“On a second thought. Can you give me some spare armor? I’ll pay you back.”
They were too far away to hear him.