Lurona city [southern shores of Fuminao Legacy Kingdom], local time [1794.03.29]
The next day, Zeph visited the Library first thing in the morning.
Firstly, he wanted to restock his personal stash of writing tools, including empty notebooks. Even if the Interface’s Notebook functionality that he was granted by Onji Togana could cover his personal notes, he wanted to be ready in case the scholar wanted to write down or draw something. Secondly, his access to the books wasn’t fully remote.
He and the Library Goddess had an agreement – his Interface’s Notebook functionality wouldn’t reserve any of his Mana Regeneration, but any other function had to be paid for. Remote access to books was especially pricey, requiring 500 Mana per second. It was true that ‘downloading’ a book didn’t take much time, but perusing the catalog or searching through the millions of books available did. Also, he wouldn’t be able to use it consistently even if he wanted to – his Mana Regeneration could cover only about half the cost and his Mana capacity would allow him a measly 4 seconds of ‘connection’.
In other words, if he wanted to bring something for his voyage, he would have to visit the Library to upload the memory of this Interface upgrade.
Well, he could also buy physical copies of the books, but let’s be real – nobody would choose that option if they had the Interface Notebook function. Especially when going into the sea – for obvious reasons.
However, he still could remotely exchange his notes for special books, and without any cost at that. Onji Togana seemed to be vastly impatient in that regard – she wanted an immediate copy of anything he transcribed from his memory and wanted to ‘sell’, thus she was personally powering the connection to make an exchange possible. He could understand that sentiment, too. With all the things he was hiding from the vast world, his chances of freely and regularly visiting her Temples weren’t high.
But the problem was, Earth’s literature was worth much more than the simple books he needed right now. He had access to all restricted wealth of knowledge, but it was meaningless if he wasn’t able to understand or utilize it. Not even a year have passed since he awoke in this new world – he didn’t need rare, advanced, and esoteric books. He had to work from the very basics and slowly build up his knowledge before even attempting to indulge in more advanced topics. Exchanging his limited stash of Earth’s works for something he could easily pay for in gold was out of the question. Not to mention, writing down a whole book was a lengthy and arduous process. Even with all the help from his Implants and Enhancements, reading Soul Memories was never an easy task.
His notes on experiments were worth even more and, as per the agreement, Onji Togana had full access to them at all times. Thankfully, she wasn’t going to make them public just yet – that would require Zeph’s and the System’s approval. But, yet again, he was unable to cash in that accumulating wealth.
At least his ruse with Alana and Alex worked out wonderfully.
Yuki Togana hadn’t known that they were present on Corora. It was a rare chance for her to attain more of the Earth’s written creations, which he leveraged during the negotiations. Other Terriens were already working under other Temples or organizations, making such an exchange impossible or very costly.
People and gods here certainly liked to have an exclusive right to the new knowledge. It was a small relief knowing that his old acquaintances from the Apes were safe and, most probably, lived luxurious lives. He would choose his freedom any time of the day instead, but it wasn’t like they were prisoners.
Probably.
Anyway, Alex and Alana delivered and Yuki Togana was more than satisfied. He had mentioned during their last meeting that he had a deal with the Library Goddess, and they not only agreed to fulfill his promise but started abusing it as much as possible. The books they had read on Earth were flowing incessantly into Togana’s Library while they started hoarding rare Corora’s books like greedy Gnomes stockpiling gold.
The Onji was especially enamored with the cultural works stemming from Japan, but that was the domain of Alana. It seemed that the Goddess was actively looking for some relaxation materials. Not like he couldn’t relate – living eternally could certainly become very boring at some point.
Alex, despite his ancestor, wasn’t a fan of the fantasy genre stemming from that country, thought. Instead, he was in possession of a long list of original myths and mythologies from across the world. Even if it never gained much traction with the Goddess, from what Zeph has heard, the cultural aspect still fascinated her. Mostly because those stories were mentioning fantastical beings that weren’t present on Earth but were very much real on Corora and neighboring worlds.
It was a mystery he wanted to solve at some point, although he already had a hunch. When he first arrived on this planet, he learned that his Intuition was trained almost to its natural limit because of the hardships his Soul had to endure on Earth. And Intuition was the main aspect responsible for auguring abilities. If other Earthlings were more talented in that regard and similarly trained, he could easily see where their inspirations were coming from.
Going back to the books he needed, there were two topics he had to gather knowledge on. There was more, of course, but his Survival General Skill was waiting to be upgraded.
Before it evolved, he had to max out the related Tier 1 knowledge General Skills. There were more conditions, but that part would probably take him the longest. ‘Corora Lifeforms’ and ‘Corora herbarium’ had to reach their max level, which meant that he had to study a lot. His journey through the sea into the new lands should help significantly as well – seeing and interacting with new species seemed to level the Skill quite fast. That plus a rich library of bestiaries and flora catalogues in his Notebook should be enough to achieve Tier 2 in the Skills before he returned to the city.
At least he didn’t have to worry about maps. Making drawings in his Notebook was still a major pain and a waste of time, even if he was becoming better at copying pictures. With the Mapmaker’s Guild Cartographer and the ship’s crew, he was very much secure on that front.
It took him most of the day to choose his books, mostly because of how many were available.
Because not much time of the day was left, he decided to take a quick ride to the Shrine. He wanted to update his notes on upgrades available at the Exchange and check how much the System would try to extort from him in a case he decided to buy the knowledge about the exact positions of the Makrun. He could use his Shrine Seed to check, but not everything was available through it and he wasn’t sure if the information about inaccessible upgrades would be the same – it was better to make sure. Especially because he had time on his hands and not a lot to do with it. He could as well have a nice ride through the empty streets of the city.
As so, he decided to take a little detour and instructed the coachman to drive through a few more extravagant districts. The view of the winter night in Lurona was quite breathtaking by itself, but it paled in comparison to the lightshow surrounding the Towers, Temples, and historical buildings.
As always, the Temple district was the most interesting. The wealth of architectural styles there was unparalleled. Even if the fluffy show covered most of the decorations, each school and style could be easily distinguished. Zeph even started reading from the tourist ‘map’ saved in his Notebook to gain a bit more insight into the history and reason for building like that.
Compared to the impromptu tour, his visit to the Shrine was quite underwhelming. As expected, the exact locations were exorbitantly expensive. Mostly because that knowledge wasn’t coming from Soul memories – the domain of the System – but was outsourced from other Onjis. He would be able to get a few high-tiered and rare General Skills for the price. Still, it was good to know that he had options. He wasn’t going to put all his hopes in the hands of the Mapmakers.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Lurona city [southern shores of Fuminao Legacy Kingdom], local time [1794.03.30]
In the last-ditch effort to compensate for his lack of forethought, Zeph spent most of the next day working on new Cubes. Or, as the System called them, Low Mana density Liquid Spell Mediums.
He cried tears of blood when buying so much mercury, but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to have Makani’s shockwave Spell, a full version of the High-frequency Spatial Flux Spell that was enchanted on his Spear, and a Tier 2 version of the Beam Spell – also available thanks to the Spells they have brought from the Timefold Tower to enchant his weapon. And it has to be emphasized that no Tower would share their Tier 2 Spells cheaply with people who weren’t part of their organization. It showed just how much his manuals for modifying Spells into enchantments were worth.
His plan was to, at the very least, memorize them. Manually constructing something as complex as a Tier 2 Spell, especially in a combat situation, was out of the question for now. He expected that the construction would take him between 15 minutes to an hour, assuming he wouldn’t make any mistakes and could spend that much of his pure Will. It just wasn’t realistically possible just yet.
To place the constructs inside the Cubes, though, P’pfel had to manually shape and harden the mercury before they could encase them. No one was able to construct that Spell, so Zeph had to trust in the Gremling’s ability to recreate the construct by hand. Thankfully, the professor was privy to the techniques used to create Spell molds and it didn’t take him much time to form them according to the manuals.
Truth be told, they didn’t need a cube at all for this process – the shaped Mana conductor would work even better if it was outside and it would work just like other frameworks used in the Towers to teach the budding Manacasters. The problem was, the cast would be not only brittle but would degenerate with time and usage. It was much better to initially shape it before stabilizing the construct within mercury by using Mana-L. The hardening agent would dissipate, allowing the stabilization effect to replace it and for the mercury to flow naturally through the shape, preventing any deterioration. Additionally, Zeph would be richer by a few Cubes which he could always use for other purposes.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
There were some complications, though. Firstly, they didn’t optimize those Spells to work inside the cube, which would cause the flow of mercury to clog and distort the shape if the Spell was powered in its entirety. Thus, Zeph would have to learn by carefully tracing parts of the construct. Secondly, Tier 2 Spells weren’t static – they revolved and morphed when activated. That meant Zeph had access only to the starting configuration without the ability to truly study the Spells’ behavior. And finally, he had to be extra careful around the active sides of the Spells. Any movement caused by the activation of its function would immediately destroy the diligently prepared shape, trivially breaking the stabilization effect of Mana-L.
Besides that, the cubes containing Tier 2 Spells had to be bigger to compensate for their size. Even if those constructs weren’t taking the whole volume of a Cube, they required more space to accommodate the flow of mercury and the asymmetry of their shape. The original Cube was 8 centimeters in size. The new ones had to almost double that. At 15 centimeters per side, the volume of mercury was almost 6.6 times larger. It was a huge hit to his budget, even taking into account the leftovers from P’pfel’s old prison cave.
It was evident that his invention wouldn’t be popular on stratum zero if he decided to start selling it as a product. If not for the direct support from his Guild, he wouldn’t be able to create so many. It was a logical outcome, though.
With him being absent for an indefinite time, Kwan was more than glad to cover most of the costs. That did delay paying off the debt he had towards Ghrughah, but because there was no interest, it was better to spend his future earnings from their business right now.
Thanks to that, he managed to make three big Cubes and one standard-sized – five in total if he took into account his old one. Each one possessed a slightly different mechanism for construct dissipation and Mana-L saturation, for the sake of testing different solutions and their effectiveness. He would prefer another empty big Cube to make some testing around ‘enchanting’ and running Tier 2 Spells through it, but it would be pure vanity. He could test the active sides using the second small Cube and use it as a proper Spell container when needed instead. He wasn’t able to fully construct any Tier 2 Spells either way. At least, not manually.
But that also prompted him to visit Ghrughah’s workshop. Those cubes would have to be kept close to his body at all times for him to feed them Mana to power the stabilization. Of course, the internally enchanted Spells wouldn’t fade that quickly, but they had to be kept in his Veil during the travel. If he lost one, there was no hope of regaining it until he returned.
As so, he asked the giant to fix him a thin, armored backpack that could be rigidly affixed to his armor. That way he would have an extra layer of protection and a battle-ready backpack to keep essential equipment. Because it wasn’t a part of his ‘Living Armor’, there was no need to produce more Fullerene. Instead, Ghrughah used one of the more durable materials that was actually better suited for purely physical shielding. It still cost him some gold, but a few thousand was incomparable to his debt of over a million.
Using the occasion, he also picked up his new gas mask, miniaturized compression box, and pistol ammunition.
The mask wasn’t anything fancy – basically, the same thing used during Tournament – but it could be easily placed over his helmet in a way that prevented it from dislodging. Besides standard filters and Air Filtering enchantment, he could connect a small container with pressurized air to it. It wouldn’t last long, but the container was also enchanted to extract oxygen from water. It wasn’t that hard, despite Zeph’s initial surprise. Heating the water was enough to release the dissolved gas from it. Moreover, the enchanted could also be used to increase one’s bodily temperature in extreme cases. The enchantment worked on an area but was containing a volume of water at the same time, so it was a good, if wasteful, method to prevent hypothermia.
The compression box would be affixed to armor separately, just under his right arm. He would have to manually keep the Mana density stable – it was a form of training, as well as the most inconspicuous method for transporting a Manasolid. It wasn’t requiring a constant focus, though. He could do that, of course, but the small size of the box only meant that the Mana was leaking faster from it. Not instantly. He would be able to sleep peacefully and the box would activate a weak Discharge enchantment when the Mana density would start to drop below the acceptable level. Manasolids were more stable in higher Mana densities, too, so he could overcharge it before taking a rest.
It would all be much simpler if Gru was awake. His companion could help with preserving information about the Tier 2 Spell constructs. He could have, potentially, kept the Manasolid inside his main body. They would be able to test tattoos and internal enchantments, potentially decreasing his dependence on equipment. Not to mention the help with the Soul Arts training he would be practicing during the journey. They could have been working on so many things together…
Sadly, the reality wasn’t that merciful.
That didn’t mean that Zeph wasn’t going to prepare for Gru’s eventual awakening, though.
He entered Irra’s laboratory without knocking. The security was strict enough for them to not worry about random intrusions.
The diminutive woman with catgirl features didn’t even notice his entrance. She was fully focused on alchemical glassware and the vivid violet grease that was slowly dripping into the final flask.
This laboratory was under the supervision of his Department. Or rather, his and Aisha’s combined Departments, as it was from after the Tournament. It was a small one, but they didn’t have a need for anything larger dedicated to pure Alchemy. Pavail’s place was much bigger, especially because of all the animals she was keeping there as test subjects.
Healing experimentation wasn’t a pretty business.
“Yo!” he called, unhurriedly walking towards her station. “Any progress?”
She clicked her tongue, not taking her eyes from the measuring devices. “I am close, but this”—she knocked on the flask—“won’t be useful. If I had more time…” her voice petered out at the end.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Gru isn’t even conscious right now, so what could we do?” he asked, stopping beside her. “Just give me the latest prototypes. If I manage to wake him up, I would rather test the waters before returning.”
She sighed tiredly. “It would be so much easier if he wasn’t in your body.”
“Yes, yes. I am the weak link here, Miss Mechalchemisth.” He rolled his eyes. “I take it, you are staying despite the lockdown?” he changed the topic.
“And what would be a better opportunity to shake off my tail?” she asked, glancing at him; her ears flexing involuntarily. “I won’t have a better occasion to put things straight.”
“Oho,” he smirked. “Earning much? Who would have thought?”
“Humph, smug prick.” She turned her head away, hiding a slight blush on her cheeks. “I will prepare the prototypes. Keep an eye on the setup, will ya?”
“Yes, yes,” he said placatingly, smiling awkwardly. “Just ‘keep the parameters constant’, right?”
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Lurona city [southern shores of Fuminao Legacy Kingdom], local time [1794.03.32]
Zeph had a dilemma.
He spent the whole previous day relaxing, as he promised to do.
By that, he meant thinking about his Spell list, by the way.
Yet, he was unable to reach any reasonable conclusion. His current Spells were the most trained and most often used. He knew he should start experimenting with Spells producing new types of Magicules – the future of his Generalist Class depended on it – but most of them were quite useless. Worse yet, he had become so accustomed to his current setup that it would be hard to break his habits. His training with Aisha and Ghrughah only confirmed that fact.
His Matrix Spell list didn’t look much different even after a whole day of thinking. He merely added a few new ones to train because he had a spare Matrix Space.
This… isn’t going according to the plan… he thought to himself.
“Perfect weather,” Kwan said, breaking him from his reverie. “It’s actually surprising the forecast was this accurate.”
He stopped, only now realizing that he was walking in circles.
The excitement is getting the better of me, he thought, turning to the group standing on the pier beside him. Or is it stress?
All Heads of the Sepia Familia Guild were present, ready to send him off. Well, besides Makani – the man was going with him.
“She’s late,” Aisha complained, impatiently tapping her feet on the wooden planks.
“Not really, we are early,” Makani said, vigorously rubbing his hands to warm them up. “I told you we should wait for her at the headquarters!”
Kwan huffed ostentatiously. “I am not letting that woman into my domain. Fat chance!”
Zeph laughed silently while making an awkward face.
After he reported how advanced the woman was in Mana Manipulation, she and Aisha went into a frenzy mode, increasing the security level of the compound to almost the highest possible level. Kwan was especially wary, like a wild animal whose territory was being attacked.
He couldn’t even blame them, though. The Mapmaker’s organization smelled like an ancient trouble waking from its eternal slumber. Aisha was ignoring it for the longest time but his assessment of their ability to Manipulate Mana made her turn one-eighty in her approach.
“All packed up!” came a shout from the boat, distracting Zeph and making him cringe.
He knew this voice very well. It was the ‘pirate’ captain, Darrah Vuld. The master of bootlicking. How he managed to become the third mate on their ship, he still wasn’t sure.
Yes, he was well qualified. He was also knowledgeable about the local sea thieves and smuggling market which could potentially spare them some trouble. He wasn’t useless or incompetent. But, for god’s sake, his tenacity in drilling holes in his supervisors’ brains and a... Ehem, in fawning over the majesty of their Guild and the superiority of each and every officer that was even slightly higher than him in the hierarchy was simply disgusting.
Yet, he was contracted with the System Onji as a witness and executor to be Zeph’s shield. The Guild wasn’t exactly trusting towards the crew and the passengers, even if they checked everyone’s background.
Zeph was just lamenting the fact that it had to be that man instead of a silent Hannyajin. Even if Kwan’s people weren’t proficient or knowledgeable in naval combat.
“Finally! No time to waste!” Makani exclaimed, walking quickly in the direction of the boarding ramp.
“Go ahead. You can heat up our quarters a bit when you are at it,” Zeph said to his back, shaking his head. He wasn’t cold thanks to the enchantments on his armor, so he could wait in peace for the Cartographer to arrive.
Makani didn’t even look back. His lacking physical Passive Enhancements were, once again, showing how bad the winter on Corora could be for normal folk.
They didn’t have to wait long after that. A few minutes later, a tall blondie exited the main building. She was dressed in a heavy leather coat with fluffy fur leaning the insides. On her back was a reinforced backpack almost the same height as her body. And she was on the taller side herself, for a Corora’s human. The thing was filled to the brim and a multitude of strange devices was hanging for dear life from the belts affixed to it.
She marched confidently up to them in the accompaniment of jingling metal, frowning as took in the ship.
“I thought it would be bigger,” she commented, stopping beside their group.
Zeph’s eyebrow raised and he looked back at the vessel. It was 45 meters long, at least. They had a crew of 10 men and three guests as of now. By any means, it was one of the larger ships he saw near the harbor, excluding the cargo ships.
“Rude,” Aisha commented. “It’s plenty long!”
“Anything larger would slow you down,” Ghrughah interjected in a neutral tone. “It was the fastest option that had a satisfying defensive capability. Cartographer.”
“If you say so…”
Staying true to the Mapmaker’s custom, they weren’t asking the enigmatic lady for her name. Thus, the introductions weren’t necessary. She would be called by her role, just as she wanted, and there was no reason for her to know their names.
Aisha was still seething that she wasn’t able to uncover that little information, though.
“It’s winter, woman. You can’t safely travel the sea in anything larger.”
“I disagree,” the Cartographer answered resolutely. “You just need to strengthen the hull enough—“
“Okay, that’s enough,” Kwan suddenly interfered. “We don’t have all day.” She sent a stinky eye to Aisha. “Everyone is here, let’s move along.”
“Agreed,” the woman nodded, turning away from the grimacing Priestess.
It didn’t take long to say their goodbyes and blessings. The Guild Heads were here on their own volition, not because they were needed. As so, there was no reason to stall and make small talk.
Also, it was quite cold that day, despite the clear sky and the lack of wind. Nobody was eager to stall.
Zeph and the Cartographer lady handled their city amulets to the official overseeing the pier and boarded the ship. A call to move was made by the captain and the moorings were lifted. The ship started to slowly float down the river with an accompaniment of creaking boards and shouting officers. The angled sails were unfurled and the ship started to gain speed.
The beginning of a long journey has finally started.