“So the kitchen thing is called a cornucopia, and it makes fruit?” Isa said
“That’s right. It’s probably got an activation word, but I just fiddled with channeling mana into it until I got it to activate. There is a certain amount of risk to doing that, since it’s possible to flub it badly enough to cause a negative reaction, but it worked out okay, so…” Rai shrugged. “Anyway, now that we’ve spent several hours meditating, we need to get moving.”
Rai opened a doorway to the area that it had been opened to before. This part of the tower was severely damaged filled with webbing and the squeak-grunts of dire rats, so they quickly retreated and closed it off, surmising that this was where the spiders and rats had originally come from. The next area they tried appeared to be primarily residential, with some doorways open, some damaged, and others closed. It was only due to the closed-off rooms that they figured out what the rooms were, since everything else had been ravaged by time.
The third area they attempted to investigate appeared to be dedicated to research-and-creation labs. In one of the labs, there were a number of intact empty containers and pieces of alchemy equipment, some of which were enchanted; Rai stored the magical ones in the dimensional pouch. There were also what he guessed were research journals that had been preserved. In another lab, he found enchanted engraving equipment and other magical tools designed for use in crafting magic items, along with more journals with magical diagrams.
A third lab was apparently some sort of smithy.
“This place…” Isa said, looking around with wide eyes. “This is a weapon smithy!” She wandered over to an anvil that had runes on the side. “Is this for making magic weapons?” She looked up at Rai and grinned. “Wanna see if we can find any good stuff here? Like… I don’t know…” She tapped her claws against the anvil. “Maybe we can figure out how to enchant our weapons!”
“I wish I could just pack up this whole place and take it with us,” Rai said wistfully. “There’s just so much here… this place is a dream come true for any scholar of the Tower Era.”
“I found an enchanted hammer!” Isa called from a different section of the smithy.
“All right, I’m coming.”
“Ooh, what are these crystals?!” Isa held up a translucent red crystal in her claws. When she tilted or shook it, it created the illusion that blood was sloshing about inside. On the table were a number of other crystals of different colors. She put down the crystal and rushed off in a different direction.
“Ingots! I found the ingot stash! This is steel… this looks like silversteel… ooh, what’s the golden one? And I’ve never seen glossy black metal like this before. What’s this one? It’s pure white! And I’d swear that that one is actually ice…”
Rai laughed. “I had no idea you were such a weapon-crafting fanatic! You sound like me when I get worked up over magic items.”
“Save your insults; this is just too cool!”
“Hey now!”
Rai investigated the actual forge. This is a magical device, he deduced. A super complicated one. He turned his attention to the anvil. So is this. Judging by the runes, this is designed to allow the smith to add enchantments to a weapon. This is just incredible; normally to enchant a weapon you need to use a lot of rare materials, but I think this anvil just obviates that need. Though… I think you might also need to use the hammer? It’s a pretty sophisticated magical tool also. If I’m not mistaken, it allows a smith to craft much faster and increases their competency.
“I have decided: we’re spending the rest of the day in here, making and enchanting stuff!” Isa declared. “Any objections are overruled by me.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Rai said with a salute and a grin.
“Since we don’t know when – if ever – we’ll be able to return here, I’m going to make two halberds for myself: one to replace my current one, and one sized for when I become a saurian. After seeing the saurian skeletons, I have a good idea of how big I need to make it. What do you plan to do? Make a new sword?”
Rai shook his head. “No, this one is very important to me; I’ll just work on enchanting it, perhaps reforging it to improve it, if you want to help me with that since I’m not experienced in making weapons. But I definitely won’t make a new weapon to replace it.”
“Oh? Why’s it so important?”
“It… belonged to my deceased lover.”
“…Oh. Yeah, I can see why you wouldn’t want to replace it. So, your lover was a warrior?”
“Yes. She was a mercenary, but not a shitty one like those idiots who attacked in your warren. She only took jobs she thought were worthwhile, and she never broke her word. She was a funny, loving person, and it’s thanks to her that I know how to use a sword. She… died in my arms right after saving my life.”
“I’m sorry. She sounds like a true warrior.”
“She was also interested in the Tower Era, so she’s part of the reason I study it.”
“I see. Well, I’m sure she’d be proud of you for finding this place.”
“I think she would.”
“Well, let’s reforge her sword into something worthy of being a true memorial of her, then! Come take a look at these ingots and we’ll figure out which materials to use when remaking the blade!”
Rai joined Isa over at the stacks of ingots. “Steel, silversteel, adamant, ivorite, orichalcum?! And that’s Heart Ice, I think, which is a special magical ice that can be worked like iron or steel. You know, I feel bad about the idea of breaking and replacing the blade of my sword…”
“My friend, think of it like this: you intend to use your lover’s sword forever, right? Never upgrading to a better sword?”
“Right.”
“So it makes sense to upgrade the sword directly. Part of that, since that’s a normal steel sword, is changing out the blade for something better suited to you.”
“Is it really the same sword if I do that?”
Isa frowned. “Let me show you something. Hold your sword out.”
“Okay…”
Isa walked over to where she had set down her halberd and picked it up. “Don’t move.”
She swung her halberd down, snapping the blade of Rai’s sword.
“Hey!” Rai shouted angrily. “What the hell?!”
“Imagine that happened mid-battle. The sword may be well-made, but it’s ordinary. A thin blade like that easily breaks when someone actually tries to sunder it. In other words, someone at some point was going to do that to you when you were relying on that sword to fight. It was inevitable. If you want the sword to actually serve by your side as a trusty companion, you need to turn it into something that won’t fail you when it counts. Replacing the blade isn’t a betrayal, it’s a way of proving how important the sword really is to you. Also, now that I broke it, you have to get a new blade.”
“Gee, thanks for taking the decision out of my hands,” Rai said sarcastically.
“I’m not sorry at all. You were being an idiot, and I needed to show you that.”
Calm down, Rai told himself, taking a deep breath. She meant well, even if she was being an asshole in how she approached it. And now that Mizeiya’s sword is broken, I can reforge it without any uncertainty about whether I’m doing the right thing.
Isa discarded her halberd and picked up the broken pieces of the sword. “Now let me study your sword so I can made you a good blade. Oh, and what material did you want it to be made out of? I don’t know much about anything other than steel.”
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Rai continued to take calming breaths for several more seconds.
“Okay, I think I’m under control now. I’m still not happy with you, though. So, silversteel is basically the same as steel except lighter, tougher, and better for making magical items. Adamant is the black metal, it’s even harder than silversteel, but it’s heavier than steel and hits really hard when it’s made into bludgeoning weapons. When used for armor, it’s resistant to magic. Ivorite is the white metal; I don’t actually know much about it. The unmelting ice is called Heart Ice, it’s mainly aligned with cold energies but I don’t know its other properties. And then, of course, there’s the golden metal, orichalcum. It’s about the same weight as steel, maybe a little heavier, but it’s super rare. It’s sometimes called the ‘god metal’ because it’s so superior to other metals. It’s hard to know exactly what properties it has, since it’s the stuff of legends and only royalty has anything made of it in the modern day.”
“So what you’re saying is, you want your sword made of orichalcum.”
“Yes. If that wasn’t there, I’d go for silversteel, but nobody in their right mind would say no to orichalcum.”
“There’s enough to make your blade, but not enough to make mine, so I guess I’ll have to settle for something else. All right! Let’s get started…”
Working together, the two of them reforged Rai’s sword with orichalcum, even engraving a flower design along one side of the blade and engraving “Rai & Mizeiya” on the other side in elegant script. In the process of forging, they also used the magical properties of the anvil and some of the magic item crafting tools to enchant the weapon with additional properties. The process took far less time than it should have, but still much more than just the remainder of the day; they weren’t finished until the conclusion of the day three days later.
Rai then served as Isa’s assistant as she made her own weapons. There was enough silversteel to make the blades of both weapons as well as the haft of the smaller one, but she didn’t have the material to make a lightweight metal haft for the larger weapon and resolved to find a magical hardwood to make that haft later. It took the better part of another three days for the smaller halberd and larger halberd blade to be forged, engraved, and enchanted – Rai did the enchanting and Isa assisted, swapping roles from the forging process.
Rai and Isa admired their handiwork.
“Your weapons may not be as strongly enhanced or possess as many enchantments as mine, but all three are works of art,” he said. He held up his golden sword, which gleamed beautifully in the light of the light orbs they used to illuminate the room. “The Floral Blade, as I’m going to call this from now on, possesses incredible supernatural sharpness and the ability to strongly guide my aim, correcting for my own shortcomings in my swordsmanship, even more than your Silver Halberd has and does, probably thanks to the superior material it’s made of. On top of that, the Floral Blade wreathes itself in flames and lightning that only harm foes, not objects or myself, whenever it is drawn; it is naturally drawn toward critical areas when I attack with it and does increased damage when it hits those areas; and I can command it to completely ignore armor twice daily. This is worthy of a legendary hero!”
“My Silver Halberd (and my other Silver Halberd, which is lacking a haft) deal more damage when I’m in Berserk Mode, it can store up to three instances of Corrosive Claw at a time that it unleashes (one at a time) when I strike an opponent, and has an increased chance of dealing an especially savage blow to opponents (dealing significantly more damage). Truly wonderful.”
They shared a grin, then collected all the crystals, the hammer, and the rest of the ingots before going back to the portal room to sleep.
The next day they resumed their exploration and found another lab.
“What is this place?” Isa said uneasily as she eyed the giant sealed tubes filled with translucent liquid and what looked like both people and monsters in varying states of wholeness or deconstruction. Rai’s excitement at finding a new place quickly turned to disgust and unease.
Kobolds. Saurians. Humans or elves. Beastfolk. Beasts. Birds. Some mostly intact. Some horribly incomplete. Some… grotesquely fused with other creatures. This was some sort of biological experimentation lab, Rai thought with disquietude. This is horribly unethical, and it throws the “Mage-Kings ruled in peace” into severe doubt. Also…
He paused, examining the mostly-intact human with a crab arm in the nearest tube intently. I’m not sure whether they’re actually dead or not. This whole place is remarkably preserved compared to most of the places we’ve seen. I… actually do have a way of checking.
“Isa… I’m going to cast a spell. It’s a second circle spell called Read Minds, and it allows me to read the thoughts of anyone and anything within a certain distance of me. It’s possible to unconsciously resist it, so I may or may not be able to read your mind if I tried, but I promise that I won’t try. What I want to know is whether any of these… entities… are actually alive.”
“They might be alive?! By all the gods, that’s a horrifying thought!” Isa looked revolted. “Who in the world would do something as horrible as this?”
“I don’t know, but it certainly makes me doubt the stories about the Tower Era being completely peaceful. Advanced magical technology, certainly. Maybe even nobody being in want of food or shelter. But considering the training room, the smithy, and this place, it seems to me that they had plenty of combat and plenty of less-than-good people.”
“Clearly. Okay, go ahead.”
“Read Minds.”
Rai’s awareness expanded, as though he had gained a new sense that covered an increasing area around himself. After a few seconds, pinpricks appeared in his field of mind-reading, indicating minds. The strongest presence was Isa, whom he ignored to focus his attention on the others. Roughly two dozen – about a quarter of the number of occupied tubes – minds existed, indicating that those were alive; about half of those were from people or person-monster hybrids. A few seconds later, those pinpricks resolved into actual thoughts.
Rai had used this spell on both conscious and unconscious individuals before, and he could tell the difference between the thoughts of someone awake, someone dreaming, and someone completely out of it – the last didn’t have thoughts, but appeared as murky messes; the middle had jumbled, often nonsensical thoughts; and the former had mostly structured thoughts. He could sift through thoughts, separating out impression-based thoughts from language-based thoughts.
The less-intact individuals that were still alive were completely out of it, and most of the rest were dreaming disjointed dreams. But three of the tubes held individuals who were completely conscious. One was a saurian, one was a human-beast fusion, and one was a chimeric beast with startlingly structured thoughts, even though they didn’t seem to be actual language. He couldn’t understand the words of the human’s or saurian’s thoughts, but based on the erratic nature of the human’s thoughts, Rai suspected that she was quite insane. The saurian, meanwhile, seemed to be clinging onto thoughts of hatred and revenge for dear life. The chimeric beast was similarly filled with thoughts of killing, but they were more methodical (and eerily calm) than those of the saurian.
Rai bent over and threw up.
“Rai?! Dragonfire, are you okay?”
“S-sorry,” Rai said, cleansing himself and the floor of his vomit with a wordless casting of Tricks. “There are twenty-three of them that are alive, and three of those are actually awake.”
Isa grimaced.
“Should we… put them out of their misery?”
“…I don’t know.”
“Mm. I’ll do it, then. I wouldn’t feel right leaving them to this existence. They at least deserve to go to the gods’ embrace. Point out the living ones to me.”
“…Okay. I’ll start with the ones that are neither conscious nor dreaming.” He pointed at one with a large bird with one wing replaced with a tentacle.
Isa slammed her halberd into the clear tube. It was clearly not glass, because the attack left a groove in it rather than shattering it. She attacked again, and small cracks spread outward. A third swing sent heavy cracks through it, and the liquid inside began to slowly leak out. A fourth and final slash shattered the tube to pieces, splashing the liquid over her. She sputtered and spat out what had ended up in her mouth. Forcibly suppressing her Berserk Mode, she lined up a shot and beheaded the bird.
One at a time, she finished off the dozen entities that Rai indicated.
“Next are the sleepers… I don’t know if this is a good idea…”
“None of them are fully intact, Rai. Most of them show obvious signs of being experimented on or even fused with monsters – those that aren’t monsters themselves. And we won’t have any way to communicate with them even if they are still sane, so we’d have to abandon them. How long do you think they’d survive?”
“I hear you, but…”
“They should have died forever ago. We’re just putting to right what went wrong.”
Rai still looked troubled, but he continued to point out the tubes of the eight dreamers. When Isa was done, he pointed at the insane human. “She’s insane, I’m pretty sure, so please be quick.”
The fourth swing that smashed open the tube also caused the three-quarters-human, one-quarter-monster to snap her eyes open and scream. Isa stabbed at her, but she dodged the attack with unnatural speed and jerky movements before jumping out of the wrecked tube and grabbing the haft of Silver Halberd, shrieking wordlessly.
“Let go!” Isa shouted, vainly trying to free her weapon from the experiment’s grasp. Rai stepped around, drew his sword, lined up his shot, and stabbed the woman through the head, blowing a hole straight through that danced with fire and lightning. The woman died instantly, collapsing to the ground.
“That one was freakishly strong,” Isa said. “Thanks for the assist.”
“No… problem. The saurian over there is next, and they’re thinking of nothing but murder and revenge. They’ll attack as soon as they’re freed.”
“He. That’s a male.”
“…I can’t tell the difference from appearance.”
“I know. That’s why I told you.”
True to Rai’s expectations, the saurian attacked Isa immediately, but Isa was ready, planting her halberd into the ground at an angle so that the saurian lunged directly onto the spearhead. Isa discharged one of the Corrosive Claw spells she had stored in the halberd previously into the saurian. He screamed and pulled himself off. Before he could move to attack, however, Rai stabbed him in the chest, putting a large hole straight through his lung and out his back. Despite the critical hit, the saurian didn’t go down, instead turning toward him and slashing its claws, ripping through his shirt and tearing lines across his chest. He staggered back; Isa smashed her halberd through the saurian’s spine and it went down.
“Okay, I managed not to go all Berserk Mode,” she said. “Healing Blood.” She held up her hand with the marble of blood. “Drink up.”