“I do have some other questions.” Will said.
“Fire away, I am glad to answer whatever you want to ask.” Dr Lynvera said.
“The first one is about mana, stamina and soul energy. Mana and stamina both have special names, but soul energy is just soul energy. Why isn’t mana magic energy?” Will asked.
“Because mana isn’t energy.” When she felt Will’s confusion, she elaborated. “You came from earth right? You had electricity? Good. If you took any class dedicated to electricity or electronics, then you probably understand that electrons are not energy. They are matter, with mass and density and all that. We move around electrons and call it electricity, but that isn’t what actually powers anything. The actual energy is the electromagnetic potential. It is a similar thing here. A mana particle can be moved around to do a lot of crazy things, but it is your soul energy that gives the mana the power to do anything. Soul energy is basically magical potential.
“People need more mana to make larger spells because the spell construct needs more material to build it. But it is soul energy that allows the mana to move and change things. Now I keep saying mana, but all of this goes for stamina as well. Stamina is just another form of mana. While mana works well within the spirit and aura, stamina works better within the body. People seem to think stamina is a degraded form of mana because it is used for fewer things. But that isn’t the case. Both are just as powerful as the other, they just work in different situations.”
“So, by providing you soul energy, I am just winding the chatterbox.” Will said. Will felt a snort of amusement through the connection.
“Pretty much. It is more or less the same as winding the spring on a cheap toy from a fast food restaurant.”
“Except this toy is a font of all knowledge.” Will said.
“Exactly right. You said you had more questions?”
“Yeah, I got a core a while back and when I absorbed it, I got a soul concept. Except I only sort of got the concept. It’s there, I feel it, but it provides no additional energy, and the system doesn’t recognise it. What can I do to fix that?” Will explained.
“Well, it is easy in theory, but hard in practice. Because it is already there, just meditating a little bit on the correct idea will get you the concept fully. However, that is also the problem. As you have no idea what the concept is about, you will have to meditate enough on different ideas that you find a resonance.” Dr Lynvera said. “It is a difficult and time consuming task, but that is really the only way. I suppose you could create some sort of resonance enchantment, but the time it would take to do that would be far greater.”
They talked for a bit, when Will asked a question.
“Who was coming after you in the video you left?” That made Dr Lynvera go silent for a very long moment.
“That was the tier five inquisitor from Divinity’s peak.” she said slowly. “You see, for some reason I have yet to determine all of the Tier fives go to divinity’s peak, and go into some sort of hibernation/stasis. Except that every once and a while they pull one out to fix problems. One person they pull out quite often is the inquisitor. They pull him out whenever someone has broken the divine decree.”
“So what did you do then?” Will asked.
“I may have stolen something very important from Divinity’s Peak. You probably don’t know, but one of the main tenets of the Divinities is that the gods placed a barrier around the world to keep bad things out. There is, in fact, a barrier, and that barrier is maintained by an artifact kept on Divinity’s Peak. The artifact is a really old tree.
“On a slightly different subject, I realized that without access to greater energy I couldn’t make a version of the system that could get people across the tier four to five barrier. And so I stole one of the fruits, and I used it to make the Ethergate. That made them angry beyond what I could have ever imagined, and they sent out the inquisitor and five other tier five gods to deal with me. In the end I had to do some drastic things just to survive like this, hoping someone would find me.”
“So why did you give me the Ethergate?” Will asked.
“By the time I had finished the new version of the system, they were already closing in. I knew it would be useless to me with the time I had, so I set it up in the visitors center. That is what I call the room you found after coming here.”
“What was up with that anyway?” Will asked. “I just showed up in a giant dome underground with nobody around.”
“So that is a bit complicated. Have you heard of the hero summoning ritual?”
“Yeah.”
“So that isn’t what happened to you.”
“Wait, What? How did I come here then?”
“The Hero summoning ritual is incredibly illegal, inquisitor level illegal. And before you say it, it is not due to human rights issues, they couldn’t care less about that. The problem is that the Hero summoning ritual punches a big old hole in their barrier to bring someone through. The second problem is that they use a stripped down version of the ritual as one of the self repair mechanics. If a hole gets punched in the barrier, it summons a squirrel or a plant or something from another world, dragging it through the Ether to gather a lot of magic which it can then use to repair itself. However, the hole created by the normal hero summoning ritual is so big that it can only be repaired by summoning something bigger and more magically powerful than a squirrel. Namely a human with such a powerful soul he can learn any concept placed in front of him.
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“What that means is that the real hero may be walking around somewhere. But if the person who did the ritual is smart, they are probably dead or rotting in a jail.”
“So why did I end up underground by your visitor’s center?”
“Oh, that. Some asshole in Divinity’s peak decided that the spawn point for the summons should be moved to the toasty interior of a giant volcano. I decided that maybe people shouldn’t get a death sentence just for being summoned, so I redirected the summons.”
After that they talked for the remainder of the time. It was obvious that Dr Lynvera was reluctant to stop talking. Wil found this sad, and wished he could keep her out, but the drain on his soul energy would be too much. He promised to himself that he would do his best to get the soul concept as soon as he could.
With their conversation finished, Will went outside. He needed to go back to town to try to get some of the supplies he needed. He figured that most of the items would be for sale, though the twenty tier one soulmasses, which Dr Lynvera had kindly changed to monster cores, would have to be gathered manually. He found Emerys first, who had a suggestion.
“If you need twenty monster cores, you can go to a slime pit.” Of course, that begged the question of what a slime pit was exactly. “A slime pit is a place where slimes spawn. Slimes have monster cores, and they either evolve into real monsters, or they get eaten and turn the thing that ate them into a monster. If you get a core crystallizer, you can make the slime’s cores physical. Let me know when you are ready to go, I want to fight things.”
And with that, Will knew what he needed to do. The trip to Stinsburough was always a bit long, which made it dark before he arrived. He stayed the night at the adventurers guild, and heard that they had already pulled out of Frostfell. Apparently a group of tier two gods had gone in and placed even the buildings in their inventory. Then they just walked away, taking every adventurer with them. Will just chortled imagining the look on Baron Agenhal’s face when he heard. With his shipping business in ruins due to the somnite pillar Will had conjured, he was very reliant on the guild for his income.
The next morning he went out into the town. He still had a lot of money, the kind of money that someone could live off of for years if they were frugal. However, he planned to spend a lot of it today. If he didn’t he would blow it all in a month just trying to supply the refugees anyway. It made Will look into getting animals for them, but every animal was exorbitantly expensive. Will did take some time to think it over. Getting animals would make the refugees not only more self-sufficient, but able to help care for the adventurers as well. The problem was, if they got an animal only to butcher it, they would lose half the value. It meant that they would have to wait for the animals to give birth and for the new animals to grow, which would be too long.
With that out of the way, Will went on a buying spree confident in his decision. He bought multiple kinds of metals, herbs, monster parts, and was able to fulfill nearly the entire list. The best part was that he spent a lot less than expected. With the price of food so high, demand for non-essentials was really low. It had been long enough that people were starting to get desperate to sell. With that, Will found himself walking into an enchanting shop. The proprietor looked up, took one look at Will and scoffed.
“I don’t sell weapons or armor, adventurer. Go somewhere else.” the proprietor turned back to a small piece of metal he was engraving.
“Sir, I don’t think you understand. I am not here for weapons or armor.” The proprietor looked up and focused on him.
“Then what are you here for?”
“I am in need of a core crystallization device.” Will said.
“Are you now? You don’t look that wealthy.” Will had to admit the man was right. He wasn’t wearing his white fur coat as that was too conspicuous and it was warm out. Moreover he was still wearing armor from the bramble that they had looted from the alchemist's hoard.
“I assure you I have enough. Adventuring work isn’t the best at the moment, but it has paid well in the past.” Will said.
“Very well.” he pulled a case out from below the counter and opened it up, displaying a half a dozen wands. “These are all the core crystallization wands I possess. You can see the prices and the description. Let me know which one you want.”
Will studied each one. The most expensive one was a tier three wand with ten charges. It would allow you to crystalize the core of any tier three monster. It confused Will a bit, as he was sure that cores should be fully physical at that point, and so he asked.
“The cores are never fully physical. If you kill the beast normally you will get a core far smaller than you might otherwise be able to with the wand.”
The tier three wand was priced at three golden lords, and so Will was sure he wouldn’t be getting it any time soon. There was a tier two wand that cost ten silver barons which was still outside his price range. There were three tier one wands with differing numbers of charges. These were all more affordable at ten silver slaves, fifteen silver slaves and a silver lord respectively.
“What do I have to do to replenish the charges?” Will asked.
“Just channel mana into it. It stores the mana and uses it when you trigger the cast. Careful though, it will take a mage most of their mana pool several times over to fill it up.”
It was then that Will saw a final wand that had fallen between the cushion and the edge of the case. It looked only half finished, but it had a tag of only one silver slave. He picked it up and showed it to the proprietor. It had only three charges, and was rated at tier 0.
“Would this be good enough for slimes?” Will asked.
“And why exactly do you need slime cores of all things?” the proprietor asked exasperated.
“I am building an array. I don’t need powerful cores, I just need cores.” Suddenly the proprietor looked interested again.
“That would certainly do the job, but it is an all but failed project from one of my apprentices. It would work for this, but what about the next time you go hunting? Let me tell you what. If you buy this one,” He held up the one going for a silver lord. It had fifteen charges. “I will give you that one free of charge. That one will be cheap to recharge for your slimes, and this one will do the trick going against your normal monsters.”
Will considered the proposition. He had been considering getting the wand the proprietor was holding anyway. It was in the budget and would be quite useful. But with the pair deal, he was sold. He pulled a silver lord from his inventory, making it look like it came from his pocket, and set it on the counter. With a smile the proprietor handed over the wand.
Will left the store, subtly storing the two wands in his inventory. He had everything he needed before going to the slime nest. It was still fairly early in the day, so he bought some horribly overpriced street food that he would rather not know what it was, and left town. Along the way he dispatched a team of bounty hunters, netting him a few copper coins and surprisingly a monster core. Happy with the day's work he returned to the fortress in time to enjoy a dinner of bear meat with the group.