by S Bailey
Sam and Jen argued for a while, when Jen finally said, “I’m the boss, and I’m giving you a direct order not to do anything until we finish this conversation. I’m going out to think about how insane you are, and I will be back in a few hours to finish this conversation.”
“Don’t tell Tamako! At least not the details. Her oath may require her to tell the City Lord about a new weapon in the city,” Sam explained as quickly as possible.
Jen paused, and then nodded her head in agreement before heading out.
Chapter 55:
Sunburn
Jen returned and the worry on her face made her look ten years older. “Ok, you are an adult, an insane adult, but an adult. If you still want to do this, let’s do it now, I don’t want to wait till tomorrow,” Jen said with disappointment.
Sam felt terrible, but he wasn’t going to drag this out a second longer. “Everything’s ready. I’m going to push just a touch of mana into my arm and runes,” he said, as he focused on his arm containing the enchantment. “It’s holding! I think this is going to work better than the mana-infused steel with monster core shavings!” Sam exclaimed with excitement. He looked intently at his arm and at the mana that was being contained within his muscle, blood, and tissues. “The mana is not bleeding through the walls of my mana channels. I was a little worried about that.” Sam clinically stated as he peered into his arm and channels.
Jen just glared at Sam after hearing this comment. She wanted to punch him in the face, and she was barely able to keep from tearing up as she raged internally at him: “What the fuck am I going to do if something happens to him! He is the only family I have and the only person from Earth here with me. Sure, I can make plenty of money and actually thrive here financially, but WE ARE FAMILY YOU ASSHOLE, AND WE ALREADY LOST KELLY!”
“Ooops, she is really upset,” Sam thought to himself when he looked up from his arm and noticed Jen’s expression. “It’s been about ten minutes, and I haven’t felt any of the mana leak out. I’m going to initiate the spell, releasing the mana through the rune scar. It should cause a light breeze for about five seconds.”
Sam thrust his arm into a bucket of water, “Shit! That’s like a bad sunburn,” Sam said, while trying to hold back a whoop of excitement after the enchantment had blown a gust of wind from his arm. He knew Jen was still pissed; he just hadn’t realized experimenting on himself would cause her to react so badly. Sam could see that she was relieved, but she looked emotionally beat.
“Good night Sam. I’m really tired. Love you. See you tomorrow.” Jen said in a tired monotone voice, as she left for her room.
“I wish she had just punched me in the face,” Sam thought, as all his excitement and energy was just crushed by her simple but honest words.
Sam made a few notes and went to sleep.
Chapter 56:
Talk It Out
Sam’s dreams that night involved some crazy weird shit about Jen burning up and disintegrating from a mana explosion. Sam didn’t need his meditation side to interpret that obvious shit. “I need to work on these body enchantment spells, but I should have discussed it with Jen before I ever started, and included her in the process,” Sam said to himself with guilt surging through his chest.
Thankfully, Jen had meditated as well and worked through her emotions. Additionally, she felt a world better when Sam gave her a heartfelt apology first thing in the morning. They both knew there were going to be risks, but they should be upfront with each other before taking them whenever possible.
Sam discussed all the remaining experiments he was planning, and Jen wasn’t perfectly happy, but she understood it was a potential game-changer for them.
Unfortunately, he still didn’t have any idea on how to create drones for her pets.
Chapter 57:
Burning Desire
Sam continued to increase the mana charge in his arm. “Each time my arm burns like hell, but I don’t want to heal my arm, and risk the rune scars disappearing. I am pretty sure that my arm is being strengthened or tempered by the constant burning as well. We’ll just have to keep experimenting Kelly” Sam said as he was analyzing his arm for the tenth time.
“I am nowhere close to filling the mana reservoir in my arm, and my next charge will need to be released outside of town, or I might knock down a wall. Finally, we’ll be jumping to the Second Deck soon Kelly!” Since Jen was busy and couldn’t go outside of the city until tomorrow, he decided to carve the enchantment into his other arm, and practice with that arm until both forearms were evenly powered and tempered.
Just before he started to carve the rune in his arm, a light bulb went off in his head, “I should change the enchantment so that it doesn’t completely drain all the mana out of my arm. Everything has some trace ambient mana in it, but I’m draining every ounce of the mana out of my arm with my enchantment. This is probably causing damage to my muscle tissue, and the cause for most of the pain.” Sam adjusted the enchantment to leave a trace amount of mana in his arm if fully activated.
The enchantment burned Sam just as much when the mana drained out of his arm, but he didn’t feel the aching muscle damage that he did in his original arm. “This sucks!” Sam thought to himself as he healed his original arm completely and prepared to put the modified enchantment on it as well.
Chapter 58:
Ninja
The next day Jen and Sam left the city early in the morning. Sam was continually increasing the output and dunking his arms in water. It was taking him all day to run his experiments because of the amount of mana he had to infuse in his arms. Unlike his space rings which simply stored and released wind that was naturally collected, the enchantment runes on Sam’s arms required massive amounts of mana to actually create the wind and force.
“It’s getting late, after this test we need to go back in the city before the gates close. I think my body enchantments are almost half full with mana this time,” Sam said, as he prepared to launch twin columns of air at the nearest trees. The trees were as thick as a man, but the air power from his enchantments blew them so far over, they almost snapped. “Thankfully, there’s no recoil with spells like there is with shotguns and most other projectile weapons,” Sam said to Jen while they readied to leave.
As they were heading back to the city, Jen thought towards Sam, “Heads up, there are three men in front of us about a mile out, with three more behind us about the same distance.”
“Man, her psych skill is getting crazy powerful,” Sam thought, as he looked at Jen with admiration.
Jen ordered Sam, “Power up your spells, but don’t push more power than we practiced. We can handle this without doing something crazy. Get ready to pull your rifle from your ring. I want you to turn around and start walking towards the men behind us, while I flank them.”
“Jen, why don’t we just lose them with my forgetme charms?” Sam asked.
“I’ve intercepted their coms, one of them has a skill that allows them to watch people from extremely far away. He was up in a tree watching us this afternoon, and they’ve prepared an ambush while waiting for us to leave. They want to kidnap us for your or my powers; they aren’t sure which of us was blasting trees over, and they want to take us back to their bandit gang. We can’t let them live with what they know, and how they would use that knowledge.” Jen explained, as Sam nodded his head in agreement.
They both powered up their forgetme charms for the confusion it would cause. Sam moved directly towards the three men in the rear, while Jen flanked them.
Jen was getting closer to the three men; the men were about 1/4 mile away when she was able to hack their character sheets and get a full sense of their levels and skills. “They are level 10, 10, and 11 brute fighters with their highest stat being strength at 13; they haven’t spotted us yet. Don’t fire your rifle unless you have to. I’m going to jam their coms when we get closer, so they can’t alert the other three,” Jen sent to Sam.
“Jen, I’ve spotted them, and I’ve drop
ped into position. I have them in my crosshairs, waiting on your signal,” Sam sent to Jen.
“Stay in place and only engage if you have to,” Jen replied.
Sam watched with stunned amazement as Jen moved with her full agility and Ninja skill; she was so fast he had to use his overclock ability to follow her movement.
“Tamako has trained you; don’t hesitate. Make your every move and strike count,” Jen thought to herself.
The men were just walking next to each other, and Jen could sense their thoughts of rape and torture. Jen blurred up behind them and used two katana swords enchanted by Sam with sharpness, strength, and poison to swiftly decapitate all three of the bandits. She then blurred out of range, just in case one of them had some hidden reflection skill that might work automatically even after their death. No, they were all dead without a sound. Jen looted the bodies, but it was just junk.
Sam and Jen turned towards the men in the other direction. It was rinse and repeat.
As they walked back toward the city gates, Jen could see that Sam was worried about her. He was usually quiet after shit like this, but she wanted to reassure him and explained, “Sam, those men were evil; they were definitely going to rape and torture us, and they clearly had raped, tortured, and killed others before. I didn’t just Log them or bombard them with arrows because I need to get real world training with my Ninja skills. I’m going to be OK.”
Sam nodded at Jen. It did make him feel better that she wasn’t going all serial killer on him and that she also wasn’t going to let the violence crush her with regret. He changed the subject, “Tamako has definitely paid us in full for opening those mana channels; she has brought your Ninja skills up to another level. However, I really need to fix the enchantment on your swords. I just don’t understand why the poison enchantment starts to glow when you swing them at top speed.”
“Tamako says it’s better to have the poison and the glow, than no poison. She also thinks the strange glow might scare away some attackers.”
Sam raised an eyebrow at Jen’s response, and she relented with the truth, “O.K. she really said to get rid of the stupid glow no matter how cool it looks.”
Sam chuckled at Jen and pulled her close into a side hug, “It does look pretty bad-ass when you use them.”
As they approached the City gates, Slim came up behind them and said, “Why do you get to kill the bandits, but I don’t?”
Jen thought about his request a moment and said, “If you know where their main bandit camp is, and you want to dish out some justice, go ahead, just don’t hurt any innocent people.”
As he bounded off, Slim replied, “I’m not really sure ‘justice’ is motivating me, but whatever you want to call it. See you in a couple of days, but I’m not splitting the loot with anyone!”
Jen groaned, not sure what she just unleashed on the bandits, but the rape and torture she had seen in their minds kept her from calling out and stopping him.
Chapter 59:
Penmanship
“We way out leveled those bandits, but that will not always be the case. I’ve got to make this work Kelly,” Sam thought, as he sat down in his workroom. Sam looked over all the supplies and materials on his desk as he liked to do while thinking, “Now that the power issue has been figured out…I hope. I need to work on the enchantment issues. I really don’t want to keep carving enchantments directly into my body. Not only is it painful, but it is slow, and the detail of the runes would be too limited for the legacy enchantments.”
Sam turned on the burners for several steel cauldrons he was heating up. In one cauldron he placed some gold shavings, in another he placed mana-imbued steel shavings, in another he placed some of his own blood, and in the last he placed shavings from a monster core.
Sam thought to himself, “All this stuff was stupid expensive. I really hope this works. I only have enough left for seven or eight experiments.” As the metal in each of the cauldrons was melting, Sam tried to push mana into each one as much as possible, and he kept doing this until the metals were completely melted, and then continued to push and fuse his mana into the liquid metal until it finally resisted his attempts to pump any more into it.
Sam then added the steel to the gold and continued to stir and push mana into the mixture. He could get a little more mana into the mix, but not much. He then added the steel and gold mixture to the melted monster-core shavings, and this mixture seemed a little more receptive to his mana, but again, not much. Then Sam poured his own blood into the mixture and pushed a touch more mana into the swirling mass of liquid. Last, he reached over and poured some regular ink into the mix.
He continued to stir the mixture and pump and compress the mana in as much as he could. While the mixture was still hot, he continued to stir, and when it cooled down just enough, he poured his “mana ink” into an iron jar and sealed it. Sam placed the jar into an enchanted “shaker” that he created for the purpose of trying to keep the mixture from separating or hardening. While the mixture was shaking, he then grabbed an enchanted machine “pen” he created to work like the tattoo needles that artists used on Earth.
Sam double-checked the pen-drawn enchantment on his arm that he was going to trace with the “tattoo pen.” “OK, everything looks good, all I need to do now is put the most expensive ‘ink’ on the planet into my homemade tattoo pen, and make magic,” Sam smiled to himself.
He could only tattoo his arm a little at a time, if he put too much mana ink into the tattoo pen hopper, it would start to thicken and clog up the needle. Sam would tattoo his enchantment a little bit, then reload some of the mana ink, tattoo some more, and so on.
Sam swore to himself, “Dammit, the tattoo looks beautiful, but I think the metal is poisoning me.” He didn’t want to heal his entire arm and destroy his tattoo, so instead of using one of his healing charms, he manually cast his minor mend spell and tried to focus on just healing the poison.
“Shit, if I have to fight off poison every time, I’m not sure if the tattoo would even be better than just carving into my body,” Sam mumbled in frustration as he was working on the poison effect. It was slow going and thank god it wasn’t some really fast-acting venom, but eventually after several hours, he was able to cure the metal poisoning. “Hey! I didn’t know you could alter your body to be resistant to poison!” Sam said excitedly, after he received a system message.
System Message == You have gained metal poisoning defense
Sam realized with a start that he’d leveled up his minor mend spell while curing the metal poisoning. That was something to consider: maybe he shouldn’t rely so heavily on enchantments. His mind raced through a dozen scenarios before he dismissed the idea. What was a minor spell compared to the mana powerhouses that were his enchantments?
Another part of him pointed out that if he didn’t use his spells, they’d never get more powerful. “What’s to stop me from hacking spells like I hack enchantments?” Sam said aloud, and that made him sit back for a moment.
He stared at the cauldrons around him and the tattoo pen. “That idea will have to wait.”
Sam felt the conductivity of the tattoo-enchantment, but was worried about how resilient it would be after he pumped mana through it. “Please don’t be a one-shot stupid expensive tattoo enchantment,” Sam prayed as he pumped just a little mana into his forearm and aimed his palm at some trash in the corner.
Sam could feel the breeze leave his palm as it blew the trash across the workroom. “My arm has been tempered from my practice and mana use, but that burned more than it should have. The conductivity of the tattoo materials also made a much more powerful spell out of the small amount of mana I used. Interesting…what if I… wait, stay focused,” Sam ordered himself, as he lowered his arm to inspect the tattoo before dunking it in a bucket of water.
Chapter 60:
Bad Boy Sam
“You are so dangerous with those tattoos, Sam. I don’t know if I can resist you anymore,” Jen laughed at him. In truth, Jen c
ould feel the pressure and intensity that had lifted off of Sam after he’d made a working proto type of a “body enchantment tattoo,” as he called it.
“I don’t know if the tattoos would make me stick out more right now or wearing this long-sleeve tunic in the hot afternoon,” Sam said, as he felt like a spotlight was on him walking down the street.
Jen knew that she and Sam, or other professionals would zoom right in on someone wearing a long sleeve shirt right now, but everyone, not just professionals, would notice a man with tattoos running down his arms in the Decks.
“Even if someone was suspicious, you just blew over an entire field of trees with your tattoos, what could they do now.” Jen said in jest.
“I just wish the mana-barrier spell in the System Shop hadn’t been so crazy expensive. But, in the time we have left, finishing and tattooing the two legacy enchantments will probably push me to my limits anyways, and I don’t want to change our timeline for jumping to the Second Deck,” Sam said, as they were entering their store.
Jen could see Sam’s ears starting to turn red as all the people in the lines were talking. “That is Sam, the great Master Enchanter,” one man said.
“He has saved so many lives with his affordable healing charms,” a small older lady praised.
“As a Master Enchanter he could demand hundreds of gold to fix enchantments for the nobility and live in the biggest mansion in the city, but he fixes enchantments for the common man and farmers! He is truly an oddity in the Decks,” a farmer exclaimed.