Ar'Kendrithyst

Chapter 234, 1/2

Erick felt lighter than air as he raced to his workshop ‘home’, almost dancing around slower travelers on the road, somewhat because he had to dance to avoid them for he was invisible when moving, and somewhat because he was ready to have some fun with mana crystals. When his turn on the main road came up, Erick rapidly decided on a specific series of experiments that he needed to set up first, probably involving one-way mirrored [Force Wall]s that he could place around the entire property, because there were people camped outside of his home.

He did not like it when people camped outside his home.

Erick stepped off into the golden wheat, stalks of grain rustling all around, as he whipped around the property and hopped across the low wall, onto his land, completely avoiding the campers. A quick verbal command to the dungeon placed his weaponry into his storage, inside his house, without him needing to actually go inside, as he walked around to the front of his cottage estate.

“Hello there!” Erick called out, from inside his property line. “What brings you all here today?”

Seven visible people were camped outside of his wall, though there was only one actual camping tent, and the tent was only big enough for two people. The majority of people were on chairs, probably taking shifts, as most of them didn’t look to be with each other at all. Erick counted at least 4 groups among the people here.

At Erick’s voice, they all jumped up at once, some were faster than others, and were already raising their voices to be heard over the rest.

“We’d like for you to join—!”

“The Red Barons invite you—!”

“The Wood Warriors have openings for—!”

Erick spoke louder, “I’ve signed with the Iron Bandits.”

Instant disgust among some people. Instant regret among others. Some people spat out questions concerning how the fuck the Iron Bandits had gotten here first, while others complained about monopolies on all the good crafters.

That last comment prompted Erick to say, “I’m not looking to delve, or to get into politics of the companies down here. The Iron Bandits’s offer was for me to be able to sell to whomever I wish to sell, and I will be doing that, for they have already given me a mana chamber to play around with. They’ll be here later to install some furnaces and whatnot. I plan to flood the market with [Rejuvenation]s, first. Then comes specialty items, perhaps. Mostly, though, I will not be here. Come back tomorrow if you want something special made, and I’ll maybe tackle that spellwork, if it interests me.” Erick added, “And with that out of the way: Is there anything else that needs to be said? Otherwise I would very much like to get on with my projects.”

Almost every recruiter went from confused, to intrigued, to wary and weird. Many did not know what to make of Erick’s declaration that he didn’t want to delve, so most of them didn’t know how to approach him anymore.

One woman with white hair and wearing leathers, spoke first, “Welcome to the Glittering Depths, Ashes Woodfield. Have you figured out a pricing structure for your creations yet?”

“Nope. But I will. If you have suggestions, then I’ll hear them tomorrow or some other day. Thanks for coming out, though!”

The white-haired woman gave a small bow, and was the first to depart. A few others considered saying small words, or even very large words to try and tempt Erick their way, but then they thought better of that action and did what the white-haired woman did; they left.

Soon, the wheat field outside of Erick’s property was empty again.

And Erick went into his house, grabbed the mana cube from Storage, and went to the first floor of his mage tower… And then he stood there for a moment. Was the tower a good spot for the cube? The upper floor was 4 meters away, so the cube would fit on the stone ground, and the tower itself was 8 meters across on the inside so there was plenty of space otherwise. But was this area good enough for both the cube, and the metiron workshop?

Erick looked up at the beams that formed the second floor, and at the bookshelves he had up there. It was a library space, but… Did he need that library space? It wouldn’t be a good idea to build a library over a place that heavily used fire.

“I don’t have to have the library up there,” Erick decided.

And then picked a spot at the side of the room, put the cube down, and—

“Actually. Time for my first experiment.”

Instead of channeling mana into the cube directly, through physical contact, Erick tried releasing his aura into the air, to send mana through the air to the cube.

This did not work.

His aura dissipated under his skin, like it had on all the other floors. He could somewhat use his aura to craft magic inside his body, and inside a mana chamber when that mana chamber was filled with his mana, but there was no aura control outside of his body. Now that was certainly a function of the Glittering Depths, and not how mana usually worked.

So Erick sat down, touched the cube, and began channeling mana into the thing…

His mana regeneration in the dungeon was only 22,500 per hour, though, and only with his [Meditation] necklace activated. This would take a while. Maybe he did need to do some delving, if only to get that number up. Skipping 3 floors meant he was missing 3 floors worth of ‘MP up!’s.

It took nearly half an hour, sitting there on the floor with his hand on the cube, to put 10,000 mana into the cube. It was easy to tell when he was done, though, because words appeared in the air.

Meta Diamond Creation Chamber activated. Please step away for full deployment.

Erick stepped back—

As soon as he was four meters away, the cube expanded, going from small size to full size in a split second. This should have caused an explosion, Erick thought. But there was no air displacement, or any physical repercussions from that quick of an expansion at all, which made Erick think that perhaps the ‘mana chamber’ Rebecca had given him wasn’t actually an expandable and shrinkable cube, but that the 10,000 mana was to power a Spatial Magic effect. The miniature cube went somewhere else, and Erick ended up with this mana chamber, ready for use. Did the small cube go back into circulation in the dungeon’s random loot tables?

Anyway!

Erick smiled brightly, and said, “Storage, every meta item but my bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation].”

Instantly, all of the metairons on Erick flickered away, and deposited themselves into the storage room, which was outside the mage tower...

And then Erick went and retrieved his Amulet of [Meditation], because that had vanished with all the rest, but he needed that one to better spill mana into the air of the chamber. He also put his belt back on, because—

He had briefly exposed his core.

There might have been people long-range mana sensing him outside his house.

Ah.

Shit.

Erick grabbed his own mana inside his core and [Return]ed to ten seconds ago.

The world tore as Erick once again stood in his tower, wearing all of his meta gear.

Erick breathed a little, feeling odd about what had just happened. The [Return] felt mostly normal. But Erick should have known not to remove his belt, which hid his core. He was not used to having to worry about that, ever, except here he was, making a tiny mistake that would out him as a… dragon. Well. How big of a deal would that be, actually? Kinder already knew he was a dragon. And they already had dragons in this dungeon, so people knew there were dragons in here. No Benevolence dragons yet, though, according to Kinder. Which was a whole other issue. Which other dragon was down here?

Eh.

The other dragon didn’t matter, and it probably didn’t matter if people found out he was a dragon, either. Erick was just being paranoid. He was going to get outed soon enough, but it was better to put that off for as long as possible.

Since Erick was once again wearing all his gear, Erick physically went to the storage box and placed his extra metamonds there, to ensure that they weren’t messed up by the mana chamber metamond creation, all the while thinking about this mana sensing issue. He wasn’t very well protected inside his house right now, was he? No he was not.

According to Kinder, people could not come onto his property without his permission, and they could not mana sense onto his property either. Erick had even seen the messages from the dungeon saying as much. While that may or may not be true, Erick didn’t really want to test that right now, and he couldn’t really see any invisible people on his property. Taking Kinder or the dungeon at their word was not something he wished to fully do, but he probably had to, for now.

Erick had thought about putting up some one-way mirror [Force Wall]s when he saw the people standing outside his property, and while yes, he would be doing that, there was another layer of security he could enact to ensure privacy, according to Kinder.

… Erick mostly believed Kinder was a good guy. But.

Erick said to the air, “Dungeon. Decrease mana density of my property to 80%.”

Decreasing mana density to 80%.

The air suddenly felt dry, like all the moisture was actively being sucked away, directly from Erick’s own flesh and the world around him. It was a pinch upon the soul. And then it was over.

Erick’s mana sense had turned ephemeral. He could still see all of his property, and even some of the space around, but mana sensing the air inside his property was more difficult, and his actual range had dropped to maybe 450 meters. The mana outside of his property remained completely unaffected, though.

“Drop mana density of my property to 50%”

Decreasing mana density to 50%.

A full body pinch grabbed Erick and shook his senses, draining him of power and mana. Floor 1 had been 80%, and his range had been 400 meters there. Floor 2 had been 60%, and his senses had dropped to 10 meters there, but here at 50% his senses dropped to 4 meters in every direction.

It was good enough.

Erick had gone for the 50% option because his personal mana was already down to half, because of the earlier [Return], which had been done in haste and in a dungeon environment which shut down outside magic almost completely; it had cost him more than expected to make that magic. His remaining mana was good enough for another 2 [Return]s, though, for Erick figured he could compensate for the tearing oddness he had experienced; it was just a bit of temporal sickness.

Anyway. He could walk around his house with this level of mana density and not feel bloated, or worried about people spying on him from the outside. This was fine. Later, he would have to actually approach Kinder about that ‘artifact of [Renew]’ that would allow him to keep a full core. Kinder had offered that as part of Erick’s deal to leave the second floor behind, but he hadn’t actually given it to Erick yet.

… Well. Could he fix that problem right now, too?

Erick said to the air, “Dungeon. Please alert Dungeon Master Kinder that I am interested in that artifact of [Renew] that he spoke about earlier.”

Automated message from Dungeon Master Kinder: I have set up this message to automatically trigger when you asked about that artifact. That artifact does not exist. What I will be doing instead is allowing you special exceptions to connect to the Script in the barest of ways. This will allow your own mana to come to you, from the Script. That mana will still equalize with whatever mana density you’re currently inhabiting, for I cannot change that.

If you break my dungeon with outside magic, then I will be exiling you. Please do not break my dungeon.

As soon as the message appeared, Erick began to feel something loosen inside. His core mana began to climb a fraction, as the Script supplied him with mana. Gradually, his core equalized with the 50% mana density of the air around him, which meant that Erick had spent a lot more mana on his [Return] than he had planned to spend… Hmm.

Hmm.

Anyway.

With this ‘connection’ to the Script, this was like how cores and mana worked in Ar’Cosmos. You couldn’t gain mana from the Script inside Ar’Cosmos without having a core to begin with, but once you did, your core regained mana based on the power of your core.

Erick said to the air, “Thanks, Kinder.”

There was no response.

Erick went into the mana chamber, closed the door, and began channeling dungeon mana into the air—

He stopped, opened the door, and went and got some books to read while he channeled; this was going to take a while. His dungeon mana only came back at 22,500 mana per day, or 6.25 mana per second while [Meditation] was active. Metamond creation was mostly waiting around for his dungeon mana to actually produce a drop of solid mana, and that took time. Once he got some mana crystal books, Erick grabbed a chair and went back into the mana chamber.

As Erick sat down, he cracked open his book and metaphysically tapped his bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation], opening up the mana therein to the chamber itself. As white glows faded into the air, filling up the chamber, Erick flicked on his amulet of [Meditation], and the white glows began to move faster. The chamber was still dark, though, so Erick couldn’t read right yet, but it didn’t take long for the white circles of the interior of the chamber to begin to glow and provide light. Once that started, Erick flipped through his book and picked up where he last left off.

He found his spot, and started reading.

- - - -

Half an hour later the mana of the room began to saturate, and Erick could move his aura through the mana instead of having his mana fall apart just beyond his skin. It was an odd way for aura control to work, but Erick supposed that’s how the dungeon allowed it to work so that people only made spellwork inside these rooms; to enforce the metiron/metamond Second Script that Atunir was trying to showcase.

And so, Erick extended his glowing white aura (which was also different, because normally his aura was clear unless he wanted to show it off) through the air, into the density of liquid Benevolence-flavored mana in the center of the mana chamber. As he touched that collection of liquid power, Erick hummed a tiny song of Elemental Healing, causing a rippling effect through his aura, changing his white glows into something more cerulean. It was rather easy for him to make a [Rejuvenation] metamond, because his dungeon-granted Benevolence was prone to lingering positive effects, and [Rejuvenation] was a lingering, positive, full-body effect.

Some Mana Altering made up the difference between Benevolence and Healing.

With a bit more aura control and shaping, Erick flickered more actual Elemental Healing into the droplet in the center of the chamber, to begin to form the actual spell. Whatever white glows remained in the air began to filter out of the collection point, while more cerulean blue power filtered inward. Four points of mana became the basis for Elemental Healing to inhabit the body. One remaining mana was to time the release of Elemental Healing properly, and to ensure the other 4 four mana did their job properly. The five point spell was not a large spell, but that’s all [Rejuvenation] needed to be, because it wasn’t focused on healing anything in particular. It was just a buffing spell, basically, and in a very specific way where true intent or specific actions were not needed, or wanted.

Then Erick blasted the collection point with intent, crystallizing mana into magic.

A tiny cerulean dot of a metamond coalesced into the air, taking a great deal of the blue glows of the chamber with it, and implying a whole lot of stuff with that simple action. That exact same thing had happened all the other times Erick had made a metamond; that dimming of a specific element, almost like it had drained out of the chamber. Which it had.

First, Erick plucked the new metamond out of the air and used his ring of [Identify] on it.

Rejuvenation, instant, touch, 5 mana per cast

Grant a touched target increased healing, condensing a week of recuperation to 10 minutes.

So that was good. Exactly what he wanted to make. The little cerulean dot glowed, while the interior was filled with fractals like a pane of artistically-shattered glass. It looked normal; just like the other ones Erick had made before. Except now, Erick could really try to understand what had happened in this creation.

There had obviously been a mana drain in the air, which would account for the lessening of Elemental Healing glows in the air. This could only mean that, even though Erick had made a 5 point spell, the crystallization of that spell had taken a lot more than 5 mana. How much more, though? According to what Erick remembered of his previous experiments, and this one here, it had taken…

“Maybe 400 mana? 425, to crystallize?”

Erick flicked his aura at his bracelet and began to pump more Benevolence mana into the air, to restore what was lost, because it wasn’t just the Elemental Healing that had been taken. The Benevolence in the air had decreased, too.

Erick tried an experiment with his next [Rejuvenation].

He barely put any effort into that creation at all, simply crushing Elemental Healing together to see what popped out.

Harmful Healing, instant, touch, 47 mana per cast

Cause unknown healing effects in the target, with a greatly increased chance of causing cancers and other malignancies. NOTICE: Using this spell on yourself or any other friendly target will heal them once, and use up one of their Saves. If the target has no more Saves, then this spell will allow the target 2 minutes of life, and then they will be forcibly resurrected on the entrance floor, where they will be expelled from the dungeon to receive proper treatment.

Erick smiled a little bit at the brilliant little gem in his hands. That was a pretty insidious little spell, and it looked no different than [Rejuvenation]. Higher mana cost, much different effect, and proof that Erick needed to actually try to make Healing Magic down here; the Script wasn’t here to smooth over bad outcomes, and, his Wizardry didn’t smooth over bad outcomes, either.

It was time to see exactly where the line lay between good, useful mana crystals, and bad, harmful mana crystals, and what sort of oddities Erick could make on that spectrum.

- - - -

Erick calculated a few different things that told him almost nothing at all, but which fell in line with what was generally known with mana crystals.

It took about 500 mana to make a basic meta-diamond, with the cheaper final-cost ones costing less atmospheric mana to create them. [Rejuvenation] took about 400 mana from the chamber, and only cost 5 mana to activate. [Harmful Healing] took 650 mana from the air, and cost anywhere from 30 to 65 mana to activate. By really focusing on actually making [Harmful Healing], and not some other Healing spell, Erick was able to make a [Harmful Healing] that only took 30 mana to activate, and which drained 500-ish mana from the air.

So that told him that directed thoughts created spells with less mana costs and mana-from-the-air, which was pretty much his experience with mana anyway. It was good to know that some baseline understandings remained the same.

But every single cerulean gem he produced ended up being the same size.

Erick started to wonder why that was. Shouldn’t a spell that cost 650 mana from the air be bigger than one that cost 450? The mana density of crystals was a variable thing, of course, so that accounted for some of it, but not all. The fractals inside [Rejuvenation] were a lot less intense than the fractals inside [Harmful Healing], though.

And normal mana crystals did not have fractals… Or at least that’s how it was according to the books Erick had gotten from Kirginatharp, and from other sources.

“So obviously there’s some sort of crushing going on,” Erick mused to himself, as he held up one [Rejuvenation], and one of his larger [Harmful Healings]. “Some sort of… inner infinity? Instead of expanding outward, the gems expand their magic inward? Well that sort of makes sense.”

All metamonds were round things, and a little squishy when they were inside a mana chamber. Outside of a mana chamber they were perfectly spherical and hard as, well, diamonds.

All the shapes for mana crystals inside the books were of normal crystal shapes, and all normal mana crystals expanded outward as they grew. But meta-diamonds expanded inward… Somewhat.

Erick’s staff, with its fist-sized iridescent white metamond, was a clear outlier, but that spellwork was also the largest metamond spellwork Erick had done so far. Staring into the interior of that gem was like staring into a kaleidoscope funhouse without end.

So now Erick needed to do some tests with making bigger and bigger spells. Just cramming everything he could cram into—

Well. No.

Actually. Erick needed to do something actually constructive. And so Erick crushed all of his [Harmful Healing]s and took half an hour to change them all into [Rejuvenation]s.

That satisfied his bargain with the Iron Bandits! Now, moving on…

Erick decided to make Bolts of every possible flavor, and begin mushing them together just to see what happened.

- - - -

[Fire Bolt] with an [Air Bolt] became [Plasma Bolt], which was a rather normal occurrence. All three spells had rather normal-looking [Identify] results, too, because Erick didn’t spend more than a single moment making any of them, and so they were simple.

Fire Bolt, instant, long range, 5 mana

A bolt of fire unerringly strikes a target, igniting them for fire damage.

Air Bolt, instant, long range, 5 mana

A semi-invisible bolt of air unerringly strikes a target, and might unbalance them.

Plasma Bolt, instant, long range, 10 mana

A bolt of plasma unerringly strikes a target, enveloping the target in highly damaging plasma for a short time.

One gem of glowing red fractals, the size of a thumbnail. One gem filled with vaguely magenta fractures. Together, they became one gem filled with bright pink fractures, which wasn’t any bigger than the original two gems. So there was definitely some condensing happening there.

Erick broke that [Plasma Bolt] and the room filled with the thousand-ish mana of the original two Bolts. With that much saturation, re-condensation happened almost instantly…

Erick could have stopped that recombination. But he decided not to. No aura touched the liquid mana. No intent reached the pink glows—

The gem coalesced again, all on its own. It was a little larger than it had been before, so something was happening there, too. Odd. Erick [Identify]ed it.

Uncontained Plasma, instant, touch, 50 mana

Release a burst of plasma.

“… I’m pretty sure that one would literally blow up in my face if I tried to use it.”

Erick crushed the gem, releasing the mana back into the air.

This time, he put intent into the working, to make a Bolt exactly as he had made through the combination of the Fire and Air magics.

A pale pink dot once again coalesced out of the air. It was the same size as the previous [Plasma Bolt] had been —small as a thumbnail— but did it [Identify] the same?

Yes, it did.

Plasma Bolt, instant, long range, 10 mana

A bolt of plasma unerringly strikes a target, enveloping the target in highly damaging plasma for a short time.

Erick frowned in concentration. “I think I need to take pictures, or something, to compare the interior fractals… Could I make that here?”

Making such a spell under the Script would be rather difficult, but Erick knew how he would do it. There’d be Particle Magic involved, for sure. Some light to scan, and then some polymer-drawing/drawing from the CO2 in the air, to lay down a copy of an image onto a sheet of plastic paper that the spell would create at that moment…

Or maybe, Erick could take ready-made paper, some light or maybe Elemental Radiance, and scorch an image into that paper—

Ah.

Erick had actually planned to make a one-way-mirror [Force Wall], hadn’t he? So he could stop people from spying on his property.

Ah. Let’s do that, then…

A few hours later, and after deciding that he didn’t want to make a simple mirror and that he wanted to make something much more useful, Erick had to stop with his experiments because he was getting lightheaded, and he rapidly realized that the mana chamber didn’t have any vents for air.

Erick burst out of the chamber, breathed clearly for the first time in an hour, laughed a little, and then went back in to collect the few hundred meta-diamonds he had made. All of those metamonds went into the front room and Erick went back into the mana chamber.

He’d return to the property-illusion spellwork when he felt like it, but otherwise, there were so many other things that were much more fun right now.

- - - -

A knocking broke Erick from his focus.

And then he realized that anyone knocking on his door was at his door, which was inside his property, and no one should be able to do that? According to Kinder?

Erick was partway through condensing the next metamond but he didn’t have to finish, so he opened the door to the mana chamber and all the mana in the room flooded out into the 50% density of the house—

Another knocking.

… Not at the door, though. More like, in the air?

Erick went to the front door and opened it up.

A group of people stood at the edge of his property. They had wagons filled with crates and boxes of all sorts. Rebecca was there with them, standing in front, shining in her silver fullplate. She saw Erick at the door, and then she smiled, and knocked on the empty air in front of her, at Erick’s property line. The air vibrated at her gauntleted touch, sounding much like the knocking at a front door.

Ah. So the property line was rather solid, then. Good to know.

“Hello again!” Rebecca said, “We’re here for the first exchange of hopefully many.”

“One minute!” Erick went back into the house and made sure he was presentable, and that he had on the right metamonds to hide himself from mana sense, which he did. And then he went back outside, rushing to the gate, saying, “Welcome, welcome. You’re all invited in.”

Rebecca smiled and stepped through the empty air, onto the property line. “I am eager to see what you’ve made, and also to set up all the stuff we spoke about. We’ve also got a full setup of blankets, pillows, some extra furniture, and otherwise. And a bunch of metiron to sell to you, and money to exchange for [Rejuvenation]s.”

“That all sounds really great! Thank you.” Erick waved them forward. “Come on in.”

Rebecaa moved forward and her people followed as she asked, “Where would you like your workshop set up? It cannot be outside. We don’t get rain all that often, but it does happen rather regularly.”

Erick led the way into his house. “This way.” He moved toward the mage tower, saying, “I was wondering if you had the capability to retrofit the mage tower into a full workshop, with all the stuff I found in Marii’s tower on the second floor. I liked that setup. You will have to knock out the second floor.”

A pile of a good 500 gems sat on the dining table, there in the middle of the front room. Erick gave them no mind as he passed them by, but Rebecca’s eyes went wide as she took them all in. And then she moved right along.

“Oh sure.” Rebecca followed Erick into the mage tower. She looked up at the wooden floor overhead, and said, “We can open the tower up. Shaping spells are another rare drop, but we have all of those available and usable by our people, and they’re easier to make than [Rejuvenation]s. Speaking of which…?”

Erick smirked. He went back to where the gems sat in half-organized piles on the dining room table, like precious stones being divided after a heist. There was probably some better way to organize them, but Erick didn’t really care to do that right now. He knew which were which, anyway.

Erick gestured to a pile of cerulean spheres, saying, “There’s 30 of them there. I would have made more, but I didn’t care to. I would be fine with making actual bracelets, too, and I will be doing that as soon as my workshop is properly created.”

Rebecca stared at the gems, her grin turning a tiny bit surprised and overwhelmed, the corner of her mouth rising to show a rather long canine. “Ah… This is rather amazing— May I [Identify] one?”

“Oh sure. Go ahead.”

Rebecca stepped forward and plucked a cerulean gem from the pile. The words for [Rejuvenation] appeared in the air, exactly as Erick promised. Rebecca chuckled. “We need to get you some more resources!”

“I would like to speak to others who have had success with metamond creation. You know they’re mana crystals, right? These things cannot be made on Veird, but they can be made here.”

Rebecca’s eyes glinted as her gaze fixed upon Erick. “Not many people know that… But of course you do.”

“The mana crystals here are different from how they usually are, and I want to find out how, exactly.”

Rebecca looked at Erick for a moment longer, then said, “I would speak of this some other time, in a more private setting. For now, would you like to get your workshop installed?”

“Of course!”

Rebecca motioned for the first of the workers to come into the house, while she asked Erick about money for the metamonds, and Erick agreed to what he had already stated; 150,000 gold apiece. An actual Bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation] would work better than a wand of the same, and Erick offered to make and sell those for 250,000, but while the Iron Bandits’ coffers were deep, they weren’t that deep. Or at least they weren’t deep enough for Rebecca to approve such a sale right now. Other people might take him up on the offer, though.

To pay him for 20 [Rejuvenation]s took little more than Rebecca saying, “Payment of 150,000 gold from the Iron Bandits to Ashes Woodfield, per [Rejuvenation] metamond, to be carried out now.”

The 20 metamonds vanished from the table, and some ghostly writing appeared in the air in front of Erick, indicating the transfer. The gentle rain of coins sounded out from the storage room, and Erick smiled.

“I didn’t know it would do that?” Erick stepped over to the storage room. “… Ah? I guess the transfer is mostly in a banking sort of way? I don’t see millions of gold on my floor, or in the chests.”

Rebecca stayed outside of the storage room, as she said, “Tell the dungeon to display the current gold total.”

“… Dungeon: display current gold finances.”

Balance: 3,000,000 G

“Well alright then.”

The words began to fade almost as fast as they appeared.

Rebecca said, “We don’t carry gold around too much, except to bring it in to deposit into storage and to use in some of the places around town. For the smaller amounts. Some people take their gold out to Veird, but Greendale has a pretty aggressive tax rate and they’re rather pushy about it, too.”

Erick smiled as he said, “Feel free to look over the other gems if you want, or I can tell you if I might have something you want.”

“We have store space in the main square if you wish to set up a store. We’ll sell everything you make for you, for 5% of the final cost. Or, if we purchase what you make, then we’ll pay you the full cost.” Rebecca said, “But honestly, except for the [Rejuvenation]s, most people can make their own necessary magics, or they find them as special rewards in the lower levels of the dungeons. Commissions for specialty items are probably where you would be making your most money, and unless my information network is malfunctioning, you told everyone that you desired to do specialty commissions yesterday.”

“… Yesterday?” Erick looked out the window. It was still bright as noon out there. “… Has it been a full day already?”

Rebecca smiled gently. “It’s been about 13 hours since last I saw you, Ashes, and the sun doesn’t set down here all that often.”

“I need to get home.” Wood groaned and snapped in the other room, echoing throughout the house as stone flowed like rushing sand. The workers wouldn’t be done for another hour, at least. “... But I can wait a little while longer.”

Rebecca said, “They’ll work quickly, but not instantaneously. Besides, there are still some small matters to discuss… Unless it is vitally important that you get back right now?”

“I can wait a little while longer.”

A nod. “I’ll keep it short, then. If you wish to have us act as a front for your commissions, then we can do that, too. We’ll take 5% of the commission fee from that, but other than that, we can handle all of the customer-facing aspects of that interaction.”

“… Well now. There’s a nice idea. Sure. I’ll agree to you all sorting out the commissions for me, but I’ll decide what I want to make, and I’ll have the clients meet with me or the other way around, on my own time schedule.”

“Agreed. Now about the specialty items that the Iron Bandits want made, if you’re available for that?”

“Sure?”

“Bracelets of [Hidden Wind]. All the Health metamonds you can make. Reflective shields. And the largest, best [Blood Corruption] weapon you can make, which will allow us to infect a target and then run away, letting the monster die on its own without us needing to put ourselves in close range danger.”

“Ah… Hm.” Erick went to the table of metamonds, and plucked out a few pastel pink and black and white metamonds. “[Hidden Wind], of varying strengths. Health is easy enough to make. Reflections are fine; I can make those. The [Blood Corruption]… I’ll make one, and you can report back to me how it worked in the field before I make more. I’m not comfortable making weaponry, but I understand the need for it. I would much rather make buffing or defensive magic.” Erick [Identify]ed his belt. “Like this.”

Belt of Many Functions, attuned artifact, 50/50, 50/50, 50/50

Blessed Memory, self, perfect buff, 1 mana per minute

Your mind is a palace.

Eternal Benediction, self, perfect buff, 1 mana per minute

Your body is a fortress.

Benediction of the Unseen, self, perfect buff, 1 mana per minute

Mana does not record your presence unless you desire it so.

Mana Density Multiplier: 75%

Rebecca read the air and her eyes went wide. “… I feel we might need to reevaulate the level of requests we can ask of you…” She went quiet for a moment, then reoriented, saying, “Forget the [Blood Corruption]. Let us discuss buffing magic…”

Half an hour later, Rebecca’s people (who were now Erick’s people, in a way) had placed groceries in the pantry, [Eternal Preservation Ward]s all over the kitchen, a bunch of new furniture here and there, and also, of course, they had remade the mage tower into a proper workshop. Erick was out one second floor library, but now he had metalworking furnaces, an anvil, hammers of all sorts, chain and pulley warehouse-crate movement systems attached to the tracks high up, and a much, much less chance of anything burning up, since the entire interior of the mage tower was now layered with stone.

It looked professional.

And, according to what Erick could see, there were no spying magics nestled into any corners here or there, though he would certainly be going over all of that with a fine-tooth look later. He bid Rebecca and the rest of the Iron Bandits farewell and escorted them off the property.

Once Erick was alone again, he said, “Dungeon: Remove all of my property permissions granted to anyone else.”

Done.

And that was that.

Erick had a few sheets of paper with some buffing magic requests from the Iron Bandits to fulfill next time he was back, but for now, he exited the dungeon.

As Erick stepped out of the dungeon keep, all of the inquisitors were gone and the sky was full of stars. Ophiel tackled him lovingly, and Erick sent warm affection Ophiel’s way, and soon they were off, into the sky, headed back home.

- - - -

Erick spent the morning making pancakes for everyone. Kiri would have taken her pancakes to-go, because though she had barely gotten any sleep, she needed to get back to work, for people depended on her, and she wanted to be depended on. She was the Gatemaster, now, even though House Benevolence still hadn’t announced that to the world, and likely wouldn’t until after Yggdrasil’s resealing went well.

But Erick couldn’t see Kiri like that; halfway run down. He offered her, “Would you like Ophiel to give you some [Hasted Shelter]s every now and then?”

He had offered her this option once before. She had said ‘no’, then.

But this time Kiri froze, as the pure desire to say ‘yes’ almost caused her to say yes. She knew ‘yes’ was the easy answer, though, and not one that she should actually rely upon. “… Yes, for a good night’s sleep. But then no. Phagar still doesn’t want me using Time Magic.”

“You can rely on me more than you do.”

Kiri smiled softly. “I know. Thank you, anyway.” And then she stressed, “So about that Shelter for the next 16 hours…”

Erick chuckled.

Soon enough, Kiri went back to bed, for a truly good sleep.

After Kiri got back to work, which was only 20 minutes after Erick cast the Shelter, Erick decided to sleep, too. His bed was comfortable, and Ophiel twittered in a little bit of joy upon the headboard as Erick fell asleep. He was not in a [Hasted Shelter], and that was kinda great.

- - - -

Erick returned to his home in the dungeon with a current goal and some secondary goals that would come later. Eventually he’d begin making some [Rejuvenation]s and Bracelets of [Self Rejuvenation]s to sell in town, but before that, he wanted to obscure his property with illusion magics.

But there was a problem.

“I can make a wand of illusion, that makes a wall that I have to recast every once in a while, or I can make a wall of permanent illusions that I never have to cast again, or I can make a mana crystal that automatically casts the illusion wall for me… Which might be possible.”

Erick looked around his workshop. It looked great; it was very ready for the creation of whatever Erick wanted to create. Rebecca had even left behind some metiron ingots for Erick to make whatever he wanted to make out of them.

“… The wand is too easy,” Erick decided.

He was going to go for the impossible magic; the metiron and metamond that made its own spellwork, automatically. You couldn’t do that on Veird. But according to what Erick had read of mana crystals…

“It should be doable here… Maybe.”

Erick got to work. First, he made some basic metamonds that would serve as tests. He ran into a problem on his very first creation.

Force Wall, instant, medium range, 50 MP

Create a stable, stationary wall of hardened mana. Lasts a long while.

Standing in the mana chamber, holding the metamond, Erick read the description floating in the air again, then said, “You were supposed to be colored and fading through the spectrum to visually show your remaining stability.”

… Maybe he needed to plug it into a wand to see if he had made it right. [Identify] and even Script boxes didn’t always tell the whole story.

So Erick exited the mana chamber and went to the forge. Making a wand was easy enough, but making a single one would still take Erick a good hour of various prep work and the final execution, while making ten at once would only add another half hour to his workload.

So Erick made ten wands.

After cooling down a wand, Erick slotted the [Force Wall] into the wand, and [Identify]ed it.

Wand of [Force Wall], attuned artifact, 100/100

Create a stable, stationary wall of hardened mana, directly in front of you. Lasts a long while. 50 mana per cast.

A test outside the house produced a flat wall of transparent white Force, positioned perfectly up and down, and perpendicular to where Erick pointed. This was different from how it was in the Script. With this metiron, there was no ability to shift the angle of the wall, or to shift the shape; what Erick put into the wand was what he got.

Which was perhaps part of the problem.

Erick looked at the octahedral wand, with its white gem at the base, and muttered, “I should have primed you with coloring first… And a whole bunch of other stuff.”

Erick discovered another nuance of metirons that he had known, but which hadn’t really registered until that moment, when he needed to dismiss the [Force Wall] to take the direct route to his front door.

And the Wall didn’t cancel.

“… No canceling of set-and-forget spells in metirons, eh?” Erick frowned. He looked down at his wand, and at the metamond he had made and set into the hilt. He narrowed his eyes at that glowing whiteness, and mentally commanded it to cancel; for the metamond itself to unravel.

Nothing happened.

He tried again.

Nothing.

“… I guess… The mana crystal is out of my power once I make it? Well… That’s certainly a difference.”

Erick wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Erick walked around the Wall, and went back to the workshop. An hour later, he came out with another wand in his hands. This one was also octahedral, but its gem was twice as large as the original had been, and it was much more prismatic than white.

Wand of the [Prismatic Wall], attuned artifact, 500/500

Create a stable, stationary wall of hardened mana, directly in front of you. The wall registers damage done to sections through progressive color fading, starting at white, then fading through blue to red. Lasts a very long while. 100 mana per cast.

The first white walls that Erick had put up were still there when he cast his new spellwork upon the front yard. As magic took hold in the air before Erick, it took the shape of hexagons, like a hundred small shields interlocking, spreading out from left to right in a slightly curved shield 5 meters in every direction.

Erick evaluated what he was seeing. Among the first things he noticed was that this Force Magic didn’t have any mana density modifier, so it would work well in 0% mana density air. So that was good.

And then Erick went up and tapped one of the hexagons. It remained white.

He punched the hexagon.

It rapidly flashed from white to… Only barely purple. Erick smiled at that. And then he punched it seven more times. When he was done, that section of the wall was translucent blue, or roughly 10% weaker than it had been when it was first cast, if Erick had made that magic correctly, anyway. He felt he had.

His punches weren’t worth much down here in the Glittering Depths, where his Stats and innate power as a dragon were quite lessened. But he still wore his Belt of Many Functions, and that still had his body enhancement magic going strong, so he was punching… Quite a bit above his weight class. Erick wasn’t sure how much damage he could do with a punch, but it was enough to put a dent in a very, very well made [Force Wall].

And now, he had a [Force Wall] that should fade through colors as it lost spellframe cohesion. It was the perfect tool to test the veracity of the theory that mana crystals could automagically cast their own spellwork, because if the hexagons stayed white, then that meant that the spellwork was fully strong, all the time.

The metirons and metamonds were already capable of constantly casting a spell when it affected a body, but ‘the body’ was a very solid magically-identifiable baseline, which gave off mana all the time, so that made sense. A designated spot of air, or something as ephemeral as ‘a property line’ was not easily understood by magic at all.

… Now Erick just needed to figure out how to make ‘a property line’ magically recognizable.

… The dungeon was doing it, after all.

And look! The dungeon was also creating a nice demarcation line at his property line, with a mana flow differential.

For his first test, Erick went to the wall of his property and set the wand atop the tumbled stone, half inside his property, half outside. With the mana density in the property at 50% and the mana density outside at 100%, this might work.

Maybe, the wand would cast magic on its own if Erick left it there long enough…

It was a long shot! But it might work that way!

Erick watched for a few minutes, both with his eyes, and with his mana sense.

And nothing happened.

Maybe it needed something more to get some automatic magic happening. How about just a gem? No metiron? Erick could place a single gem on the property wall, too. So Erick went back into the house and made himself another [Prismatic Wall] metamond.

With a new 6 centimeter-wide prismatic marble in his hand, Erick went to check on the wand he had left sticking halfway off of his property. And he paused.

“Ah. Well. I should have expected that, in retrospect.”

The wand was gone. Someone had stolen it.

Erick just laughed. And then he laughed more as he went back to the house and tried to think up some different source of mana flowing possibilities.

“How about a series of wands, each pointing at each other in something of a circle…” Erick hummed as he sketched an idea on paper. “It can be that rune for [Renew], with the [Prismatic Wall] gem at the top.”

… Might work.

A few hours later, Erick had a prototype. It flashed lights, it poured mana in a contained circle, and it leaked everywhere, while the suspended, untouched [Prismatic Wall] gem hung in the gap of the [Renew] ring, and did nothing at all.

“So that’s not working.”

… Could be a problem with mana containment, or with efficiency, or Erick could be completely wrong about how this worked. He could at least work on containment better.

“How about something to gather ambient mana and flow that ambient mana…”

Well that required Erick to put a Domain into a metamond, which was yet another difficulty...