I gave a small nod as I watched James returning to his quarters. As he was not technically part of my assets, I was unable to find any detailed information regarding his available energy. However, I had noticed several inconsistencies in how he had acted on his return trip. If it were the normal James, he would have simply teleported back without waiting for anyone to send him. He would never simply wait in line at the Fairy Ring.
Due to this, I watched him with my menu at the ready to descend and fight a desperate battle, if it turned out to be necessary. If he had been possessed by some form of void entity, it would be too late to do anything about it if a powerful void monster was able to take him straight to the heart of one of my worlds.
Thankfully, it didn’t appear that it was anything like that. With Fyor’s problem taken care of, I was able to remove one impending catastrophe from my list. All that was really left that was urgently dangerous was the shark wave. Until Leowynn’s priests were able to ascend and become fallen gods, she would be our only preventative measure there.
As always, though, I was an advocate for allowing mortals to solve their problems on their own, if at all possible. I set an alarm for this wave incident, setting it to automatically pause the world if there is ever an ‘infected’ wave large enough to cause serious damage to a local population. Hopefully, the fallen gods would be ready to act before that alarm was triggered.
“By the way…” I spoke up suddenly, looking around. “I don’t think I’ve heard about any void creatures appearing in Fyor. Have any of you?”
Leowynn, Ryone, and the others in the living room all paused briefly. There were minor void creatures starting to appear everywhere, with most of them no more than minor nuisances. I couldn’t say whether it was because the wall of the world was weakening, or if we had just grown strong enough that we had started to attract their attention. However, I hadn’t heard of anything about such incidents in Fyor.
Anything happening there could simply be explained as the results of a mana siphon. Now that void incidents are becoming more and more common, I had to raise this question. “Now that you think about it… you’re right.” Leowynn nodded her head. “None of the explored floors of Fyor have any void connections that I can detect.”
“What about its outer shell?” I looked towards Leowynn, knowing that she was the best one to ask about this. Leowynn simply gave a wry smile
“The outer shell of Fyor is… a bit special. It’s about one and a half billion times the size of the shells for worlds like Deckan and Earth. Earth’s shell, depending on the surrounding nature of the void, can look anywhere from the size of a person to the size of a small city. Fyor’s, at its smallest, is over twice as wide as the planet Earth in the main dimension. Scanning all of that for void links is… challenging. Even for me.”
My eyes widened briefly as she gave me the numbers. I knew that the size of the dimensions within the void were not representative of a direct scale, but for the difference to still be that big… “If the size of the shell indicates its strength, like James theorized with the void energy devices he made before, then it’s no wonder that there haven’t been any incursions in Fyor.”
“I think you’re forgetting something.” Accalia suddenly spoke up, blinking in realization. “The barrier between layers is completely impassable, a setting created by the system itself. I bet that it stops void links, too.”
I shook my head, denying that claim. “If that were true, you couldn’t use dimensional travel to avoid using the gates, as that is also a type of void link.” While James had quite an immense level of power, I doubted that he would be able to casually cast a teleportation spell that could break the power of the system. Similarly, though… he wouldn’t have been able to use such a spell that cost one and a half billion times normal.
“My guess is… whatever lives on the uppermost floors is stopping the void entities from interfering. At that level, whatever it is could be powerful enough to scare away the void monsters with their presence. Maybe even something that could ignore their normal forms of immortality.” While that would be a worrying thought if it were true, it was the only answer that I could come up with for Fyor being completely free of void interference.
“Back to James, though…” I shook my head, breaking away from the subject of Fyor. “I’d like to give him the Frost and Lightning artifacts from Lorek to study. However, before that, I want them to be brought to an empty, harmless location in space to ensure that changing from one set of laws to another won’t trigger any sort of cataclysmic event. Anyone opposed?”
The others shook their heads, and I looked at Aurivy. She smiled, her eyes flashing gold. “Frost has been moved to a deep part of space without any monster presence on Earth. No major disasters that I can sense… moving it onto an uninhabited world.” After she said that, she suddenly winced.
That wince was all it took for me to realize that something had gone wrong. “Did it explode?”
“Not… quite.” She shook her head. “It instantly transformed the planet I moved it to into a block of ice. Like, I’m talking about flash freeze on a global scale.”
I let out a small sigh, nodding. “Okay, return it to where it was. Lightning probably won’t turn out any better. The systems of Lorek are either causing the artifacts to be far stronger, or they are radiating their powers outwards in a similar manner to the stars of that realm.” That said, I did want to find another one of those artifacts. It felt like we should offer James some kind of reward for putting himself on the line like that.
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Thinking about that, I turned my attention towards one of my older achievements, an effect that was only usable once per month. The Sorcerer title, able to provide me insight into a magical problem that is within the scope of my power. To date, I had only used it once, and that was to get the template for combining my three different types of magic at the time. Sadly, the combination proved to be too costly to construct compared to the benefits it gave. However, this was a title rewarded for creating a new basic magic system, which was itself a huge achievement. Certainly, it should be capable of far more than I had used it for.
Focusing on the title, I posited my question. How can I use magic to detect these primordial relics over extreme distances? I made sure to focus on those crystals which contained inherent divinity when I asked this question, not wanting the system to misinterpret and think I meant something entirely unrelated.
Just as with the first time I used this title, images began rapidly flashing by in my mind, showing various types of spell diagrams. I was able to infer that these were detection-type spells of varying degrees, though the images never settled on one long enough for me to properly study it. Next, it moved on to show a series of monsters charging through space, as they were able to sense the existence of these relics with only their instincts.
Finally, the images shattered, and something new appeared. It was a three-dimensional diagram indicative of fourth-tier magic, but it was far more complicated than anything I had personally studied. Regardless, I knew the magic by heart, and couldn’t forget it even if I wanted to. It was like a song that had gotten stuck in my head, replaying itself over and over until it was ingrained in my memory.
I gave a small wince as I felt the spell diagram taking hold within my mind. However, it was not the only one. There was a second spell forming at the same time. This one was different, formed from the arrays of Lorek and Spica. Just as with the first spell, it was perfectly recorded in my mind, saving the details for all materials required to form the array itself.
Ryone looked over at me, a small glint in her eye. “You just did a magic thing. I can tell. It’s my job. What did you do?” Her voice gradually became more and more excited as she asked those questions, until she was leaning forward with wide eyes.
A small chuckle escaped my lips. “I used the Sorcerer title again, this time to make a spell that can detect objects like those relics and seek them out. I’ll meet you in your magic basement to show you?”
Ryone had vanished before I even finished speaking, causing me to blink and stare at the empty space. From beside me, Aurivy gave a little laugh, slapping my arm. “Well, get going mister. You don’t want to keep a woman waiting.”
I coughed dryly, slowly standing up and transporting myself to Ryone’s magic research basement. It had been a long time since I was here. My last memory of it was when third tier magic was first discovered
The floor was no longer a mess of carved scribbles from trying to understand basic formations. Instead, there was a long row of bookshelves along three of the four walls, with a vast empty space between them. Ryone was standing in the middle of this space, eyes shining as she watched me. “Show me!”
Rolling my eyes playfully, I gave a small nod and waved my hand, creating the geometric form of the spell that had formed in my mind. “This is the form that it gave me for Earth’s system. It creates a pseudo-sentient living spell bound within a starmap. The entity within the star map will attempt to fly to points where the artifacts are stored, like how a monster seeks them out. Only, its detection range seems quite a bit bigger.”
“What happens if the entity finds it?” Ryone asked, carefully studying the spell as she walked around it. I could see her eyes scanning over every line and curve, committing the entire structure to memory one piece at a time.
“It can’t. Since it’s bound to the star map, it will just circle the appropriate location.” I explained with a smile, describing the effects of the spell. “Casting the spell again will create another entity within the same star map, which will track down a different relic.”
Ryone nodded her head, before seeming to arrive at the main problem with this spell. “What is its mana consumption…?”
I gave a dry chuckle, scratching the back of my head. “About half a million for the initial cast, and then one hundred thousand every day. The Lorek variant only works for a god, and is considerably cheaper, but also only works in that world.”
Half a million was a large amount. Perhaps only the specialized Maxers of Fyor could afford such an expenditure without relying on additional resources, and even then it would be close. For me, I could easily maintain the spell with my Keeper stats. However, there wasn’t much that I wouldn’t be able to maintain if I used those stats.
Ryone winced when she heard the cost, before seeming to think it over. “Half a million, huh?” I could see the gears working in her mind, and knew that she had come up with a plan.
“Mind sharing with the rest of the class?” I asked with a raised brow, earning a small grin from my Goddess of Magic… also the Goddess of Merchants, as I was being reminded.
“One of my tokens can be redeemed for one thousand mana. One of Terra’s tokens, according to the exchange, is redeemable for five hundred and twelve of mine. So, if someone were to redeem one of Terra’s tokens through the exchange rate, they would be able to afford to cast this spell. Of course, they’d have to come up with either another hundred tokens of mine every day, or the hundred thousand themselves to keep it going.”
“Ahh…” I nodded in understanding. “Though, that said, I don’t really want to put this spell on the boundless caravan. It would quickly turn into a treasure hunt, where the rich parties would spend more money just to easily break through to godhood. I’d rather have this spell in the hands of people we trust.”
Ryoe gave a small nod at that. “Then, do you have a solution for the mana cost?” It was likely that James would be able to afford it when he was at his peak, but that wouldn’t be for quite a while. It was true that people could typically recover their energy to full after a day’s rest, but that was under the circumstances where they consumed a meal of a fitting level.
There will naturally be no meal served within my worlds for anyone at James’s level, so he will be forced to recover far more slowly, lest he find a high-density source of energy to consume. That said… “I can probably take care of it. What’s the best mana battery we have?”
Ryone’s eyes turned playful as she heard my question, clearly understanding where I was going with this.