The Itemancer 2

by Forrest Minter

  Before I could think about that further, water streamed out from the center of the circle created by the ring, forming a thin layer inside the boundaries of the circle. Despite the water being paper-thin, when I looked into the plane it created, it was dark, with hidden depth, like looking into a lake at night. The process seemingly done, I looked at Gwen, and she shrugged. Remembering an expression my old master Jorn used to say, I spoke as we began walking into the portal.

  “Nothing for it, but to do it.” With that, we entered the portal.

  Chapter 12

  Stepping through the portal felt like moving through a waterfall in the tundra of the northern expanse of the empire. Beyond that, the transition was seamless. One moment I was walking through the portal, the next I was standing in a great expanse of nothing. The portal itself was the only thing visible in the space, with everything else being a pitch-black void. This was my first thought upon moving through the portal, my second being “Holy crap I can’t breathe!” Without thinking, I tried to say this aloud, and wasted even more of my precious breath. Seeing my distress, Gwen grabbed onto the portal’s edge, hauling me closer to it. When I got nearer the portal, I felt a slight breeze, and realized that air was traveling through it. It wasn’t much, but enough to breathe by.

  Choking, I set to work. Crafting another ring from wire, I dumped over five hundred thousand XP into a wide array of abilities that would give me specific control over the new dimension I resided in at the cost of mana. (tuning it to the specific dimension was astronomically cheaper than giving it control over every dimension) Sticking the ring onto Gwen’s finger to take advantage of the massive mana pool I gave to all my item spirits, I instructed her on what to do.

  First, I grabbed one of the rocks that I kept on standby in case I needed to create a Rocky in an emergency. Gwen then used the rock as a template, multiplying, and expanding it until we had created a planetoid the size of a small moon. Unfortunately, this was where even Gwen ran out of mana, and she handed back the ring. Her avatar flickered in and out of existence like a badly-made illusion as I considered my next step. Remembering that I likely had a decent amount of XP saved, I opened my fleshcrafting menu.

  Name: Rowan Loren

  Type: Itemancer/God

  Max Hp: 153

  Hp Regen: .08/Minute

  Max Mana: 476

  Mana Efficiency: 5%

  Mana Regen: 5/Second

  Strength: 7

  Speed: 6

  Agility: 7

  Intelligence: 8

  Constitution: 6

  Charisma: 5

  XP: 42,857

  As I had thought, my pool of XP was significant. It was a bit concerning to see that my charisma had gone down a point, but not an emergency. Bracing myself against the pain I knew was coming, I dumped all of my XP into maximum mana, and mana regen. I stared at the prompt my fleshcrafting menu offered, complete with what my new score would be.

  Name: Rowan Loren

  Type: Itemancer/God

  Max Hp: 153

  Hp Regen: .08/Minute

  Max Mana: 1,273

  Mana Efficiency: 5%

  Mana Regen: 10/Second

  Strength: 7

  Speed: 6

  Agility: 7

  Intelligence: 8

  Constitution: 6

  Charisma: 5

  XP: 53

  Confirm changes? Yes/No

  Grimly I pressed yes, and with a startled yelp I blacked out.

  …………………………………………………..

  I woke an indeterminate amount of time later, feeling like every nerve ending in my body was encased in molten metal. Gwen’s avatar was nowhere to be seen, but her gun body floated next to me. Once, months ago when I first invented fleshcrafting, I increased my mana by two hundred, and had been nearly incoherent from the resulting headache. That experience had not prepared me for this one in any way. The pain felt like it had seared my soul in the moment before it overwhelmed my senses. I checked my fleshmancy window again, and found that my HP stat had gone up several points, as had my HP regen. In some ways that was a useful boon, but in the end, I would trade it back for the pain if I could.

  Groaning, I shook the kinks out of my body, and set to work. First, I created an atmosphere. At least I tried. It would be more accurate to say I created about a fifth of an atmosphere before my mana bottomed out, and I was struck by a terrible headache. Gwen reemerged, and patted my shoulder. “Here, let me take over for a bit.”

  I handed her the creation ring, and she completed the work, showing me just how much I had pumped up her mana. I shook my head at her casual display of power, and moved on to the next thing on the list. I no longer needed to stay by the portal in order to breathe, so I grabbed Gwen’s gun, and pushed off from the portal; using the mild gravity of the small planetoid to slowly pull me toward it. As I drifted, I considered my patch of space. While I couldn’t perceive the edges of the dimensional pocket, it seemed small enough that the atmosphere Gwen generated didn’t have anywhere to go. It certainly wasn’t the gravity holding it in place, as there wasn’t yet enough mass on the planetoid to provide much force. After falling in slow-motion for what I guessed to be an hour, I landed gently feet-first on the surface.

  Handing the ring to Gwen again as her avatar rematerialized, she began adding more mass to the planetoid, burning through her mana supply for a second time. The gravity was still a bit spongy, but felt much more solid now. She handed back the ring just before her avatar flickered out of existence, like a flame running out of fuel.

  I looked out at the vast expanse of stone and cracked my knuckles. Now that the boring part was done, the fun could start! Several days went by as I tunneled out spaces in the stone, setting up spawn points that would churn out creatures at a low rate. I also used my control over the laws of the dimension to tweak some of the more basic systems to my advantage. One major change was that I turned XP into a physical drop in the form of gemstones. That way I could decide what received the XP, rather than paying the ten percent cost to transfer XP from one item to another. Gwen also contributed a startling concept.

  “Rather than having to do all this manual tunneling, why don’t we wake up the planet, and have them do it for us?”

  I blinked in surprise. The idea of manifesting the soul of a planet was both daunting, and ingenious. “When did you get so smart?”

  She shrugged. “Laziness inspires brilliance I guess. I was just thinking I wanted someone else to tunnel for me.”

  I nodded, and checked my options. Surprisingly, it was no more expensive to awaken the soul of the planet than it was for any other item soul. I shrugged as I confirmed my choices, and a minute later, the planet’s avatar manifested. A tall, bald man with ebony skin, and golden yellow eyes appeared in front of me.

  He spoke in a deep voice with an accent that on my home world would have been called Scodlish. “Aye, and who might yae be?”

  “I’m Rowan, your creator.” I said, trying to sound confident.

  He mulled this over for a second before responding to me. “And whay did ye make me?”

  “I needed a place to farm enemies for experience. Since that meant they needed to exist long enough to earn some for themselves, I made a world.”

  The spirit nodded as if this made all the sense in the world. Since he was the world, I supposed it actually did.

  “Right. What be mah name then?”

  I shrugged. “You can choose one for yourself if you want.”

  He nodded, and after several minutes decided on one he liked. “Right then, mah name be Gaius.”

  I nodded. “Sounds good, Gaius. Alright, here’s what I need you to do…”

  After giving him the appropriate abilities, and a healthy infusion of extra mana capacity, he set to work making tunnels, and spawn points that would produce monsters. Meanwhile, I used the leisure I now had to produce a decent facsimile of the sun. The pocket dimension was already set to maintain itself at a
certain temperature with a certain amount of ambient light, but I decided to forgo that in favor of a large sphere in the sky that rotated around Gaius providing light and heat.

  With that, our work was done, and everything was up to Gaius now. Activating the portal ring, me and Gwen returned to the ship.

  Chapter 13

  “Get inside before you get swept away!” I called to Gwen.

  We had been sailing for three weeks since creating the pocket world, and most of that time had been spent indoors hiding from the rain. I had quickly discovered that I absolutely despised the sea. Between the rain, the waves that occasionally crashed against the ship, spraying me with water at inopportune moments, and the occasional proper storm, I was ready to be back on land. Naturally, the isolation didn’t help. Dee still wasn’t speaking to me, and I had yet to see Izzy again. For all I knew, she had left the ship at some point. Gwen and Amy were still talking to me, but the absence of the others was felt in every interaction.

  “The storm isn’t that bad!” she called back. “I’d give it a three.”

  “A three is plenty to get inside!”

  The current storm was more like a seven by ocean standards, rocking the boat drastically one way, then back the other. I wasn’t even sure why Gwen wanted to be outside, but I worried that it was a legitimately dangerous place to be. Taking a chance, I rushed out, picked her up despite her squawk of protest, and sprinted back inside. At the last moment, I realized that sprinting on wet wood hadn’t been the best course of action, as I lost my footing. Luckily, I fell in just the right way that it came across as an acrobatic slide, our bodies coming to a stop on the drier wood of the floors indoors.

  Gwen pried herself out of my grasp with an indignant grunt. “I was enjoying the rain.”

  “How? It’s pouring out there.”

  She shrugged. “I just-” Before she could finish her sentence, her avatar dissolved, and I realized Izzy was visible, having just stabbed her.

  “I really wish you would stop doing that.”

  Izzy shrugged, and began inspecting her blade as if looking for a speck of dust somewhere.

  “So does this mean you’re back?” I asked after waiting for her to speak.

  “I haven’t decided yet.” She said emotionlessly. After another moment, she sat down next to me, and leaned against me.

  “What you said, and what you didn’t say was not cool.”

  “Ya, I know.” I mumbled, feeling guilty.

  “Dee and I talked it over, and we’ll forgive you if you stop trying to fight us over how we protect you. We’re mature enough now to realize that we have free will. Not only that, but we’re goddesses in our own rights. If you can’t grow up enough to realize that the world is a harsh place, well… I don’t actually know what we would do. We might decide it’s easier just to leave.”

  My breath hitched at that statement. Perhaps, it meant I was a horrible person, but prior to that point, I hadn’t truly considered that they might leave. That they even could. As soon as that thought materialized though, I realized she was right. There was nothing binding them to me. They had consciousness, power, and free will. If they wanted to, any one of them were more than powerful enough to create a country, an empire, possibly a world of their own. Except Gwen. Even as I faced this realization, I immediately felt guilty for not giving her the same power I had given the others, and resolved to do so.

  Once my moment of realization had passed, I nodded. “Alright, you’re right. Do what you need to do. I’ll stop getting in your way.”

  Izzy nodded, and burrowed farther into me. I was always impressed by her ability to maintain a perfectly stony expression even as she displayed her feelings in other ways. I finally decided to ask her about it.

  “Hey by the way, why do you always look so calm even when you obviously aren’t?”

  She cocked her head at me, and a moment later her face blinked from emotionless to smiling as if she had been emoting the entire time.

  “You wouldn’t know this since you don’t see our avatar menu, but we can actually turn our facial expressions on or off. The default is to have them on of course, but after you installed all of those assassin skills into me, it made sense to leave them off most of the time. Sometimes I honestly just forget about them.”

  “I wish I had a button like that.” I muttered, winking at her.

  She chuckled, nuzzling my arm in response, and I marveled at how it even seemed to change her personality. “You should leave it on.” I told her, ruffling her hair with my hand. “I like you being emotive.”

  She snickered slightly. “That would kill the mystery.” She winked at me, and disappeared into invisibility. A moment later, her physical body vanished as well, sending me sprawling as I had been leaning into her. I laughed, and gave empty air the finger as I pulled myself up. A light thwack hit my head, leaving it stinging slightly. I winked as I rubbed my head, and set out for the cabin.

  ………………………………………………………………

  Leaving the portal to my pocket dimension open proved to be only a negligible drain on my mana, so I had elected to leave it on for the entire three weeks in hopes it might serve to train my mana regeneration in a more natural way. So far, there was no evidence suggesting it had; but, leaving it open also allowed me to easily check in on what I had taken to calling my “dungeon world.” Gaius had made significant progress in the few weeks we had been sailing, tunneling farther and farther into himself. He had also taken some liberties of his own, creating what he called “zones” based on the difficulty and theme of the monsters. It was something I hadn’t thought of, but seemed obvious now that he had done it. I was extremely grateful for having awakened him.

  Gaius’s avatar manifested in front of me as I stepped through the portal. “Hey Gaius, how’s it hanging?”

  He smiled, pulling a piece of paper, and quill pen from the empty air. “Hangin. Now there’s an idea.”

  “Um, what do you mean? And where did you get the paper and pen?”

  “Oh the paper n pen be a dramatic flourish. They just be an extension of meself. As to yer first question, ay was thinkin of new themes for dungeons, and hangin seems like an interestin one.”

  “Errr right. Sounds good.” I told him.

  As I’d gotten to know him, I’d realized Gaius’s personality was what might generously be called an artist. He seemed obsessed with creating new zones, and had badgered me until I gave him the ability to invent new monsters. Luckily, the invention process only cost him prodigious amounts of mana rather than costing XP, so he had set to his new task with gusto, filling in slots in his zones with thematically appropriate monsters. I didn’t really understand that drive myself, but I respected that it mattered to him.

  “Actually, I was here to try out one of your dungeons. Do you think any are ready?”

  “Well, ya wouldna get much XP yet, but the monsters’re there.”

  “That’s fine, I’m just testing it out. Maybe you could send me to one of the lower difficulty ones?”

  “Aye I could do that.”

  He waved his hand, and a circle of light sprang up around me. A block of text displayed on the wall, and stayed with my eyes in a way that made me slightly dizzy. “Now entering wilderness zone, level 5.”

  I smiled. Level 5 enemies didn’t sound too bad. The smile lasted right until I left the hollow of the tree I had been transported to. It fell from my face as a gang of creatures closely resembling rabbits with shark teeth surrounded me, making an aggressive chittering sound that I interpreted as “look, dinner.”

  Trying something I hadn’t attempted before, I summoned a holy sword into each hand. Luckily, I didn’t suffer any kind of backlash for attempting this, but the rabbits took it as a sign to charge. Clearing the ten feet in a single leap, the horde of rabbits attacked in an eerily simultaneous wave. Rather than attempting to fight, I ducked and rolled. The horde collided in a chittering ball of fur, and I cast a fireball from my
closed right fist. The chittering turned into screaming as the horde scattered, running in every direction, though it didn’t seem as if I had inflicted any casualties.

  Gritting my teeth, I raised my blades to fend off the rabbits that had scattered toward me, and five strikes ended four of them. By this point, the rest had regained their senses, and were charging toward me. I began launching icicles at them, and though the piecing attacks seemed more effective than my fireball had been, they only hit one target at a time. Two rabbits fell to my icicles before they reached me, but it wasn’t enough. Twenty-odd rabbits were about to flow over me like a wave, when a barrier of white light sprung up around me.

  “I figure it’s better than resurrecting you later.” Amy said from behind me. The wall flared, and spears of light extended from the wall, burning into the rabbits, ending all of them in a single blow.

  “Wait, where did you come from?” I choked out, releasing the breath I had held when I thought I was doomed.

  “I was in my amulet. You didn’t notice I was gone?” She asked, a slightly pained expression on her face.

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I just assumed you were secluding yourself somewhere on the ship like Dee, and Izzy.”

  She shook her head, seeming ameliorated. “No, I just had nothing to contribute to the situation.”

  A howl sounded in the distance, drawing both of our attention. “We should go before something else shows up.” I said, looking at the rapidly dissolving bunnies.

  “Probably a good idea.”

  I hesitated, remembering the XP gems, and collected the ones I could see. Having nothing better to do with them I experimentally absorbed them into myself, hoping to fuel my fleshcrafting. I was immediately disappointed when I discovered they were only worth three to four XP each, but felt better when I remembered I was on a low-level floor. Higher-difficulty enemies would no doubt be worth a lot more. Not to mention that the monsters hadn’t had enough time to mature, and gather XP themselves.