---James---
People were slow. Painfully painfully slow. More accurately Jess was slow. Why hadn’t she chosen a kinetic affinity?
After the show of heading out, Maddy had turned around and left her equally as slow body behind. As was polite. Her eyes were capable of ‘pop’ing through the air at the speed of sound plus cooldown time and while it was true her mana ran out with frequent sustained jumps…it still averaged out to a decent speed. Something like 800km/hr give or take? A bit lower? It was decent. ‘Popping’ apparently took a relatively small amount of mana – it wasn’t even a spell, more some innate ability tied into her magic like some magical muscle working off of magical stamina which was a thought…
Troy on the other hand could run the fastest of the trio clocking in at somewhere around highway speeds – 120km/hr give or take while covered in a glowing cloak of light. His main push for speed was ducking into his shadow realm – something hindered less by mana or even domain exaustion and more lack of shadows with how barren the planet was. Maddy had created a few curved shadow casting walls for him to jump between but that cut into her own jump-time mana costs…Troy could forcefully create his own shadows to jump into but that had strange prohibitive costs…Still between those he wasn’t a problem.
Jess on the other hand was a tank who had never needed to run thousands of kilometers in a day and it showed.
Her one ability to move fast was tied directly into protection – she could almost teleport into a spot to protect someone with how fast she moved…but only for true danger. It straight up didn’t work as a cheese mechanic. It also only worked within a limited range – An area she was protecting? No throwing themselves into danger half a world away…at least not yet?
All this was to say, James had actually given up after a half hour and started carrying her piggyback.
She weighed…a bit more than her size would have indicated but defensive stats made you heavier and it wasn’t something for James to worry about. Especially when she stopped using some strange field that helped her ‘stand her ground’ – if anything, the only real challenge was trying not to hit her with his swinging arms not that it sounded like that would do much to her.
They had decided to plant the dungeon as far away from people as they could for maximum safety. From what James could tell, there was currently a roughly established settlement on both sides of the freshwater ocean. This side was a magic settlement. The other an aether one. Directly in the middle of the two, there was free real estate for world wonder creation.
James jumped, cutting across a sort of jagged bay that would have been way too annoying to run around.
As he passed across the recessed section of ocean, he spotted a few large fish swimming slowly about on the bottom and made a note to come back and try his hand at fishing. This was the first sign he had seen of anything existing here other than flat grass and massive ocean-lake.
Hoisting Jess back into a more comfortable position after landing James began running again.
As he ran, James texted Richard. It just felt right to tell his other friend what they were doing. Context was obviously needed so he sent a transcription of their interaction with R and conversation…but that and his minor complaint at having to carry something had led to a response he hadn’t been expecting.
Richard responded a moment later. < Who the fuck cares about bending over to make the world better for children? This is our world. Make the world better for us, not for little shits.>
James was suddenly incredibly self conscious about sending their whole conversation without permission. It hadn’t even crossed his mind and now he felt like he’d broken some invisible trust or something.
James responded. There was something personal about it for Richard – guess this hadn’t come up before?
It took a long time for Richard to respond again.
James ran for a bit.
James sent back.
If anything Richard didn’t seem to be too mad at Jess anymore.
James described their plan a bit more before trailing off. The rest of the run was done mostly in silence – it was to windy most of the time to talk to Jess and she didn’t have an AI he could ping messages to.
Another hour of running and the time started to feel right.
Carefully dropping his burden – light burden, and not even one he minded – James jumped into the air and waved down the two teleporters.
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“Does here seem good?” James yelled from the air.
Troy looked around panting heavily and then nodded collapsing directly onto the ground.
Slowly Maddy’s body flickered into place on the grass beside him. At first James thought it was an illusion but then she helped her friend up and illusions couldn’t do that.
Could she teleport her entire body? Why hadn’t she done that to start? Also why hadn’t there been a massive pop if her little eyes made small pops?
James shook his head and floated down to stand by the exhausted crew.
“Thirty second break and then we plant the seed?” James teased prompting a groan from Troy and a thumbs up from Maddy.
Jess caught up to them her hair slightly windswept but otherwise looking relatively good – somewhat obviously, she hadn’t been running for long or for a while.
After giving everyone a few minutes to start looking normal again James started to feel impatient. It felt like Christmas strangely enough. Somehow in the past day the otherwise unimportant seed had become something like a present he wanted to open. What would it look like? Would it grow like a plant? Would it pop into place? Would it make a doorway? James wanted – no needed – to know!
Picking a spot roughly seven to eight meters off the coast, James pulled out the red ball and placed it on the ground. The box had given specific instructions to grow – he didn’t need to push mana into it or pile monster corpses on it for fertilizer or anything…although that might not hurt?
The only stated requirement had been water. Lots and lots of water.
“Want to do the honors of watering it?” James asked Maddy figuring she could magic up some solution.
Placing a hand on the ground Maddy conjured a grey bucket and handed it to him.
Touche.
Filling the bucket James brought some water over to the seed and began slowly draining it, extra eyes appearing and carefully watching the seed as he did.
As soon as the water hit the small ball, it seemed to dissolve. Like sugar in water the red shell burst and a milky substance rushed through the water unnaturally fast.
Grass melted into nothing, dirt following shortly after as the puddle spread and sunk into the ground.
James jumped back as the edge of the puddle crossed where he had been standing then stood at the edge to watch what happened next.
Over the course of maybe 10-20 seconds, a shallow hole the size of a kiddy pool had formed a thin, thin strip of milky liquid laying on the bottom of it.
The liquid started off greenish brown and muddy but quickly grew silver as it melted away the dirt and grass. James suddenly realized it looked like it was evaporating – the silver disappearing – and he started into action running back to the water to grab a second bucket.
Tossing the water into the silvery pool James watched the whole pool visibly drop a few centimeters even as it churned into life once again.
James ran back to the ocean coming back for a third dump.
“Should we make him work for a few more dumps? Maddy stage whispered to her conspirators. James ignored them and began bounding back and forth getting into a groove. If only he could make the bucket heavier and better able to suck up water. Then this could be a good workout.
“Alright, one channel coming up,” Maddy spoke after a second before all three of them began melting a path from the ocean to the pool.
Maddy hummed and stared at the spot while both Jess and Troy scooped sections of grass and stone out with their bare hands quickly digging a small channel from the ocean to the pool.
As soon as they got it deep enough water began to flow. First as a trickle, then as a constant rush.
All three of them suddenly started.
“I got a blue box,” Jess spoke after a second. “Says a trial is being formed somewhere on the planet. Says if it's allowed to form fully unknown danger may befall us all. If I stop it apparently the rewards will be pretty good…”
Maddy looked at the channel pumping water into a rapidly dropping hole and spoke a speck of mirth in her tone. “If I stop it for the rewards can we start it up again after?”
“Somewhere on the planet?” James asked, ignoring the shenanigans. “…and everyone but me got this message? That’s good, no one knows where we are yet.”
“Some might have abilities to find us just based on that,” Maddy spoke after a second her voice growing serious. “Conceptually tracking the ‘problem’ or ‘danger’ or ‘exciting egg incubation’ should be possible. There's also a good chance there will be a future warning with more detail.”
“Still, we have some time,” James muttered staring down as the liquid continued to drill downwards.
Its colour remained whiteish but as it sunk it became obvious the pool was glowing slightly. The pool itself was silvery grey-white, but the glow it released cast rippling rainbows across the edges of the pit – like a white prism splitting light into a rainbow.
Like most overt displays of magic…it was kind of pretty. “Neat” Troy muttered leaning dangerously far over the edge of the pit.
The four stood there for a bit watching the pit continue to dig. At a certain point unspoken the four switched to sitting around the hole with their legs dangling over the edge. From this perspective, they could see the slope of the digging – as the dissolving liquid dropped it melted outwards slightly causing the hole to grow wider and wider the more it dropped.
“How deep do you think its going to get in the end?” James asked after a while staring down at the distant glow.
Everyone gave the question more thought than it needed.
“Maybe the center of the planet?” Troy answered after a while.
“Didn’t some of the description mention a forge? Maybe the core of the planet is the forge they were talking about.” Maddy offered.
“I think we need to give it more water,” Jess added after a bit. “It did say it needed a lot…how much of the sea do you think it would want to drink? The entire ocean?” she added a moment later.
“The cost of creating this wonder is the planet's drinking supply.” Maddy looked nervous for a moment. “Let me try something.”
Grasping absentmindedly Maddy melted a chunk of the ground converting it somehow into a wooden slate and pitch black pen. Using the pen to melt carvings into the wood with pulses of mana she began to sketch quickly – shapes and words tied together with nonsensical scribbles only she understood.
“More and more I realize how important my water concept is.” She muttered then stood up and began forming a sloping sort of aqueduct half her eyes left behind near the pit the other half puppeting her body off into the side.
Roughly twenty meters back from the trio Maddy dropped once more and began converting large strips of the ground into a trickle of water that rushed down her pipe and into the pit as well.
As Maddie’s water fell, it joined the pool below in a splutter of fizz and violent burst of steam. Her water seemed to be different from the ocean water somehow.
Traveling to the ocean she grabbed James’s discarded bucket and brought a half full pale of water over to the corner. Making several key changes to her tablet she tried again – this time from James’s perspective she vaporized the bucket of seawater, wrote some more symbols that moved slightly as she drew and then began re-converting stone to water while a pile of dust began forming on her side.
This time the fake water bubbled slightly as it entered the pit below but mostly began forming properly.
Maddy frowned harder and then walked back towards them to stare down at the pool below.
“What’s up?” Jess asked after nothing happened for a few moments.
“Without a concept dedicated to removing foreign concepts, it's hard to scrub the contaminates from my conversion,” Maddy responded. “…at least a part of me seems to think I can improve the filter with some plants all along the pipe, the real problem is scale. How long will we be watering this? How much can I even convert and how much mana will the conversion cost – even assuming I loop back some of the energy from the stone to fuel more conversion? I don’t have a concept dedicated to that sort of self sustaining ability and can’t figure out a cost good enough to bridge the gap. There's only so much wanting it to work I can do – without power to back that up its useless.”
Her spell continued to work in the background – a small block slowly melting at the end while a stream of clear looking water trickled down the tube and into the pit below.
It was dwarfed by the initial channel of seawater continuously pouring into the pit on the other side. The sound was growing as the water had further and further to fall.
As if trying to prove her point a small fish chose that moment to get sucked down the path to fall below.
With a small fizz, a cloud of slivery smoke flew up passing by them a moment later.
“I think…I think before anything else I’m going to see if I can bridge a gap. What is actually happening here? Without being able to see that properly…well I’m kind of blind to actually helping. I think it's worth putting a bit more effort in? Or should we just ignore it and hope for the best?” Maddy asked everyone for their opinion.
James hesitated. He hadn’t seen a problem with their current setup, but he would also be willing to put in the work himself especially as this was his seed. It would be weird asking someone else to put in the effort – he didn’t feel like it was that big of a deal especially as they didn’t even know if there was a problem.
“Maybe?” Troy responded after a bit. Maddy nodded. She seemed to be waiting for even the tiniest of pushes because at the barest of yess’s she seemed ready.
“In that case, with sight to see and eyes to be, take of me to insight we…” Maddy’s voice faded away as if pitch shifted into a realm James couldn’t hear. As she mumbled nonsense the world almost vibrated condensation visibly pulled out of the air into dozens of floating droplets of water. From one moment to the next, Maddy’s body almost evaporated the drops all becoming countless eyes that spun and slowly fell like eldritch rain.
A good half the droplets continued to fall down towards the water below and only a few of them seemed conscious enough to teleport away.
James watched as his friend turned into water-eyes and then was melted by a pool that ate water and burned everything else.
“…is she good?” he finally asked when nothing seemed to happen.
“I hope.” Jess responded with a strained voice.
She sounded like she was trying to sound unconcerned while visibly worried.
Welp, that’s all they could do, wasn’t it?
Hope.