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Leo
Leo contemplated what to experiment with next, trying to think of something that wouldn't seem too destructively overpowered. So he figured that he should attempt something either defensive or for general utility.
“Hey Allis, how do you cast a mana shield?” He curiously asked while he molded around his mana.
“A simplified explanation would be that you direct your mana just outside of your body, and think of a dense material to form it.” She explained while giving a demonstration around her hand.
The still freshly minted mage arched a brow at the thick, mostly translucent, gold tinted shield that covered her hand. “Can I control the general shape of the shield, and does it have to be surrounding me?” He asked inquisitively, as he had a hopeful idea.
She gave him a knowing smile and explained. “Yes, and if you're thinking of making weapons and shields, then you have to remember that you are using raw mana to do this, mana that you can't pull back into your body and have to supply it with more when the construct is damaged.”
A wide child-like grin split his face as the potential of what he could do was all but confirmed. ‘Oh, I'm about to have another moment if I can do what I think I can do, but I have to test something first.’
He easily flowed out mana to create a baseball and a bat, then threw the ball up and swung at it to gauge the bat's strength and the ball's distance. It traveled for a bit before it blinked out of existence. He repeated the action again, but tried pulling the ball back into his hand with his mana before it reached the limit. It worked perfectly.
‘Hmm, I seem to be able to control my constructs up until about forty feet, and the bat didn't really suffer any damage. I also didn't feel like I used any mana to pull the ball back, so let's try something a little…bigger.’
Focusing on the image of a large pickup truck he pushed all his mana out to create the construct, feeling a large chunk of it get used as the vehicle came into existence.
Allis’s passive irritation at how easily he mastered mana constructs twisted into a jaw dropped shock. “What in the hells is that, and how much mana did you just spend?!”
He beamed at his creation and gave it a showmanship bow. “This is the horseless carriage that I told you about, only in construct form. And I think I used a decent chunk of my mana, like taking a bite out of a plane sandwich.”
Her eyes shifted between him and the construct. “You may have an insane amount of mana…and I thought you said it needed something to fuel it, how is it going to move?”
“That little test I did with the balls told me two things. One, that my effective range for maintaining a construct is somewhere around forty feet. And two, all I have to do to move said construct is to push it with mana. I don't even have to use up the mana, just use it to apply motion.” He explained while walking around the truck to better examine his handy work.
She cocked her head. “Huh, I would have never thought of using the shield for travel, in fact I don't think anyone would have…” Her tone sounded genuinely impressed.
“Creativity and imagination Allis, it seems like most of the world is lacking in it.” He sighed pitifully before opening the truck's hood, and what he saw could only be described as a flat panel that looked like textured machinery.
‘Pretty sure that is not what the internals are supposed to look like...Hmm... I'm not a mechanic, so I think I made the equivalent of a life sized toy truck. Not that I need the internals, I just need the wheels to move.’ He closed the hood and walked toward the driver's side.
She crossed her arms, apparently taking slight offence at him insulting their world. “Well Einstein, can you think of other uses for it?”
He was about to respond with a quip, but paused at what she called him. “Wait, did you just call me Einstein? How do you know Einstein?” He questioned with utter confusion.
“No, I called you Magnus, Magnus Ironhilt. He was a genius dwarven inventor that created and discovered many things. I'm guessing that the necklace referred to someone else you know.” She raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
His confusion dropped and he nodded. “Yeah, but could you repeat the sentence again, because I just want to personally confirm something.”
She obliged without complaint, seemingly aware of what exactly he wanted to test. “Well Magnus, can you think of any other uses for it?”
A few things began to click as he furrowed his brow. ‘That confirms the translation fuckery going on with the necklaces. It supplemented the word with a similar meaning, until I got the specific word. The intent for its use was there, but none of the specifics. I wonder if that's also a problem with mana as well…’
He entered the driver's seat, gripped the steering wheel, and sighed. “I'll show you some other things after I'm done with this. Let's see if this thing can move.”
The experimentive human tried pushing the truck with his mana, and he felt it begin to drain as the construct slowly started to move. Sadly the vehicle didn't respond to the steering wheel when he attempted to make a turn, eventually making him stop after traveling only a few dozen yards.
He thumped his head on the steering wheel, remembering the one important detail. “No internals…” He groaned.
Allis quickly slithered up to him as he exited the large construct. “That was incredible! With something like this you could transport quite a bit.”
“Sure, If you want to go in a straight line. Not to mention that I started to feel my mana drain, but I think it's because I was riding in it. I assume any extra mass that's not mana gets counted as exerting force, so energy needs to be expended. I wouldn't try making something like this again, because I lack the knowledge of its internals, and it's way too heavy with mana consumption compared to flying.” He explained casually, then let out a resigned breath.
The serpentine selarin stared blankly at him like he said something truly unbelievable. “What?!” He blurted out defensively.
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“With what you just did and how you broke everything down so quickly, I still can't believe that you are a peasant on your world…” She remarked in disbelief.
“Just because the quality of life and education improves across the board, doesn't mean people suddenly stop struggling to survive. There are always new challenges, and difficult circumstances to overcome…” He remarked dejectedly with a shrug.
“That's depressing… Also, why are your constructs green?”
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Fel
Fel decided to check up on Leo after ferrying more selarins to the camp via a teleport trip. She was still feeling drained from her insane attempt to get everything ready in a single day, so she restricted herself to one teleport trip a day. While she was eavesdropping, her heightened sense making the task trivial, she learned that he befriended the town healer and made a deal with the innkeeper.
She was astonished at how quickly he was progressing, and he seemed to have more than enough coin to leave the kingdom if he wanted. The idea of him leaving town so early nearly made her run back to camp to attempt more teleports, but she knew that being drained of mana for long periods could cause permanent and unpleasant side effects, so she resigned to just spy on him for the day.
Following the trio out of the inn, she felt a tinge of jealousy when she glimpsed Elaria kissing him, as well as over hearing their whispers. “I'm the one who summoned him…” She grumbled irritably, knowing that she was more annoyed by the fact that she was ordered to follow the plan and keep her distance.
At least she was more or less assured that Elaria wouldn't out him for any reason, instead that concern was momentarily directed toward the healer, Allis. Judging by a few off hand comments she managed to hear when his sound spell was down, it seemed like the selarin mage also knows that he's a summon.
Even though she hasn't turned him in yet, and they seemed friendly, the fact that she's a mage from an academy still gave her an uneasy feeling. But later in the day, as she overheard their conversation while they were leaving the market district, that feeling of mistrust subsided when Allis comforted him, and he offered to do the same.
‘I'm going to have to pull the kill order on her then, because they seem way too invested in each other. Well that's one problem that's sort of peacefully dealt with, but damn it, it's only been a few days and he's already altered so much of the plan. Hopefully that won't be a running theme once he's brought into the fold.’ In actuality she loved that she didn't have to wait years for tangible progress, but wasn't looking forward to Yez being constantly on her ass about it.
When they exited the town, Fel snuck over the wall further down and quickly sped to the forest to watch from an optimal hiding spot. She was glad that this was only his second time openly practicing magic, and that this time she got to watch it from the start, unlike last time. Allis seemed to be helping him with his magic, or at least as much as she could try to help someone with such insane natural talent. And the lesson was as short as she expected, as he started to experiment with his magic. She also finally noticed that he didn't need words to cast, something that she would have normally missed if she wasn't paying more attention.
‘Huh, he's just messing around with shielding magic. Why is it green though? At least he's not doing anything too-’ The thought paused when he created a massive construct.
‘Insane…’
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Leo
Leo spent the rest of the afternoon testing the potential uses for the magic he personally named lantern wizardry. He created tools, a small shelter, and tried to make a variety of small machines. Allis was shocked at the number of constructs that he was able to create, saying that his title of dragon might extend to his mana pool as well.
After he began to feel like his body was tiring, he decided to call it a day and head back to the inn. He still needed to set up Kesl's stove top and oven, as well as take a peek at the shower system before heading to bed. Elaria seemed to notice his fatigue, her posture drooping for obvious reasons.
He mentally sighed, a little disappointed that he had to adhere to the age old saying business before pleasure. ‘Unfortunately she's going to have to wait another day to properly celebrate her new found freedom.’
After having some dinner, he went to the kitchen to finish his end of the deal with Kesl. He fixed four rune enchanted iron plates to the stove top, and one in the large oven. On the stove and oven themselves he started creating the controls. He wanted to go all out for his first real contracted bit of work, so he added two settings to the plates.
One summoned fire like a gas stove, the other acted like an electric stove, and each plate had five levels of heat to set them at. He also created a safety feature, making it so that if no one was in the vicinity for the past hour, then the plates would automatically shut off.
‘I'd hate to have my favorite inn burn down, even though most of it is made of stone.’ He mused to himself just as he finished his work.
He showed Kesl how to operate the controls, gave him written instructions, and carved in labels next to all the runes to make sure it was as easy as possible to use. The inn keep was speechless, because all he thought he would do was make his stove produce fire for free. The mini kaiju forced him to take two more gold coins for his work, not taking no for an answer.
The wayward summon was deep in thought while he headed back to his room for the night. ‘Fuck me... It felt like he was going to rip my head off if I didn't take the extra gold… I mean more money is always a good thing, but I'm pretty sure I could buy myself a small house now. I should go to the merchants guild tomorrow to sell my ‘pleasure-chiefs’, no that's kind of a shit name, gonna need to workshop that…’
When he got to his room he saw only Elaria passed out on the bed, since Allis went home for the night. He decided that he wanted to take a shower before going to bed, as well as going over the runes that made it work. So before he hopped in, he pulled out a small book that Kesl lent him. The book had instructions and designs for the whole shower system, it was given to Kesl by the mage who made it for him.
The first page of the book was pretty straight forward. “Okay, the dial just contains the control runes, so there should be a compartment next to the base… Ah!” He muttered to himself as he found the medium sized metal hatch.
The unsuspecting human opened the compartment that contained the main runes for the shower, and was horrified at the scene before him. Somewhere around two hundred irregularly placed runes were scattered all over the inside, with a complete mess of glowing lines interconnecting them. His jaw dropped as he took in the utter chaos, before he began flipping to the translations for the runes.
He was met with the mad scribblings of random sketches and unorganized diagrams.
His expression gradually altered to show the growing migraine that was starting to form as he continued to skim over the book. ‘Christ, no wonder Kesl needs this fixed every so often! I was curious as to why his shower needed any magical maintenance, since runes don't get damaged by the environment and last as long as the material it's on. Plus as long as the system is relatively simple, then the magic should always produce the same outcome… But this…’
He placed his hands on one of the runes to feel out the interconnected lines of mana, and he reeled back from how many different connections there were.
‘It's like the worst cable management system found a way to fuck spaghetti code, just to produced this abomination!’ He mentally shrieked.
In just a cursory attempt to decipher the madness that was in the book, he could already tell that over ninety percent of the runes were either useless, unnecessary, or over complicated the entire system for no reason. Closing the book, he slammed the compartment shut and proceeded to begin taking a shower.
“That's... That's a problem for future me...”
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