I wipe the dirt clearing away at last.
Okay. Magic lady’s questions are over, so I can finally get answers of my own.
I have three questions I can ask before she probably must sneak back to her caravan or something, so I decide to list them and pick the most urgent.
One. What is this world called. I’d heard from someone that names can give you good insight onto the nature of an object or place.
Two. The origins of The Tide. If I was summoned here to keep them away, I have to know about them and how to keep those things from destroying everything.
Three. How to break bindings. While the skill description says they get summoned from somewhere else, it doesn’t say anything about getting taken back there.
Which also means I’m probably stuck in this world.
I decide to go with the three questions method again, and quickly made the marks again.
For the first question I went with drawing a generic globe, and adding a question mark next to a blank text line.
“I assume you wish to know this realm’s official name?”
I respond with a checkmark, and she continues.
“Long ago, when the first gods were brought forth to rule this universe…”
Oh boy, here we go…
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Thankfully, the strange lady realized she was late around a quarter of the way through, and I got the answer to my question, but I don’t think I’m going to be asking them anything again.
Her explanation took a full hour, and was covering an impressive amount of material, so by the time she realized, she barely threw me a bit of gratitude before blinking out of existence in the direction she’d come.
It was very informative though and covered quite a lot of this world’s history.
The summarized version of her history lesson of an answer was that the gods of this world named it Temporis, after their grandfather, who ruled [† Time †] itself. She also mentioned around 30 different wars and their participating nations, so that certainly helped set some precedent for what the Kitsumari Empire could manage.
Though I still cannot believe that the First Relic war killed more people than the entire earth’s population… Absolutely chilling.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
In any case, I now had more info about the tides and how they operated. From the description the first through fifth Beast Tide conflicts, I learned they directly feed off of mana, meaning that they would follow the ley lines of Temporis, search for intersections, and crowd the area until it was drained. Some individuals were born without mana, known as nulls, and would become prized heroes of a given nation because they weren’t able to be detected by the monsters unless by visual contact.
I take a moment to remember the fact that I’m a mana-dense wall core. In the path of mana-consuming beasts. With barely any way to defend myself.
Whoever summoned me here should’ve known better.
Not to repeat myself, but I’m really feeling doomed.
“Mun arr kina maan?”
Oh, Kohaku woke up? I don’t have anything for them to do, though.
I send a feeling of gratitude to her and her ear twitches again, before she runs off towards a vague patch of green that I assume to be a forest.
Hunting, or perhaps relieving herself.
With not much else to do, I experiment with my construction ability by making a few stone shapes.
I start out with simple things like triangles, pyramids, cubes, and cylinders before filling them in with materials from my storage. Another feeling of gagging and I have a collection of various shaped materials. I reabsorb them all and start trying more complex shapes.
Firstly, I use some nice looking wood to make a nicely carved frame for a bed, and proceed to make said bed from some fabric and feathers from some arrows. I absorb Kohaku’s blanket and resummon it onto the sleeping space.
Next, I try my hand at sculpting stone, aiming for a specific outcome. The first few tries fail horribly when the stand for my creation cracks under its own weight, until I make them thicker and apply [Superior Materials] to its entirety. The end product is a waist height pagoda lantern, standing on four legs and having two levels, the lower one possessing a recessed cubby for my gem self to nestle into. I summon a few candles into the upper portion, before realizing I don’t have a way to make fire myself. I pull a flint and steel from some camping bundle and set it hanging off one of the ornamental hooks of the lantern roof.
The last thing I do for the time being is summon a collection of random stones, shape them into angled bricks, and form a ring around the edge of my senses, as well as a fire pit opposite of Kohaku’s new bed.
Finally finished with my experimenting, I decided to treat my fox-kin to something nice. Several ceramic platters later, and a few summoned foods, the firepit is now crowded with meals ready to cook.
I hope she likes curry.
It was very annoying to figure out, but I managed to create something resembling a curry by ‘shuffling’ my storage space until the various vegetables and liquids were a sauce.
No, it did not feel pleasant.
No, I will not elaborate.
Sure enough, Kohaku arrives and is carrying a basket of berries.
Did she weave her own basket? Impressive!
When she finally enters my radius, I can sense her awe. She sets the berries down next to the edge ring, and starts inspecting the food. Soon enough she runs off for a few moments before returning with small branches and twigs from trees, tossing them into the small pit and lighting the fire with the flint and steel. She pauses afterwards, and looks back at my lantern with a quizzical stare, shrugging, and lighting the candles too.
She hesitates again when she notices the cradle for my gem, and very cautiously uses her blanket to pick me up and set me inside.
Why not just pick me up directly? Is it a culture thing? Probably a culture thing. Maybe some child’s tale about cores being painful or being mind controllers.
At last, the sun is setting, Kohaku is roasting a steak, and I feel much more dignified being in a proper holder.
Today was good. Here’s hoping for a simple tomorrow.