War Aeternus 3: The Culling

by Charles Dean

  Lee didn’t have a clue how to deal with her. There was no way that he could ever accept that someone like Amber wasn’t a person. He just decided not to press her on the issue. “Fine. Think of them like a hunter’s pet or however you want, but help me out. I need you to send some messages to Ling.”

  “Okay, I’ll also go find this town’s stable or whatever and get a mount for us,” Jade said. “Just don’t start drinking without me. I’ve always wanted to get plastered with Dwarves. I mean, they say that a Dwarf can drink anyone under the table, but little do they know, thanks to my powers, I can control my blood alcohol level! Ha ha! This is going to be great! When I get home one day, I’ll be able to tell all the friends I’m going to make about how I out-drank a bunch of Dwarves in the middle of a big underground city!” Jade laughed to herself as she skipped off into the distance.

  “Wait, you forgot the messages!” Lee called out after her.

  “Don’t need ‘em. You’re going to tell her to wait for you, that you’ll pick her up soon on a fancy mount and that everyone is going to ride off into the sunset, where they’ll use the power of emotions to do the clearly impossible and overcome some unbeatable challenge through friendship or some crap.” Jade gave Lee a wave without bothering to turn around.

  “Now how can you look at that and not want a harem?” Augustus asked, but Lee didn’t pay him any attention. He watched Jade until she disappeared and then took off after the old Dwarf who had promised to help him out. The Dwarven village wasn’t big, and thanks to Ethan’s help, he knew exactly where the old man was.

  “Hey, one more thing,” Lee began as he raced up to the man. “Do you know any place that is completely dark, creepy-like and has a magic stone fragment?”

  “Oh, the trial room,” the Dwarf said, turning around. “Yeah, we hit it when digging the foundations of our city. That crazy tiger beast went to it recently, and it was, for some reason, covered in vegetation and all sorts of things. There were a bunch of stones around it and a statue in the middle, talking at her. I didn’t hear what it said, but . . . Well, I guess no one did. All I know is that she took a look around the room for a bit and then left. When I went back, there was only the statue, holding the glowing gem in its hands like it always does.”

  “You guys have never tried to take it for yourself?” Lee asked the man.

  “Well. . . This town has been here for a while, and legend has it that, when the founders first dug into the ground and revealed the room while clearing the city, they lusted after the rock, and one after the other, they tried to take it. It was magnificent, beautiful. Everyone who has seen it can agree, so we understand where their desires came from. Sadly, every single person that went into the room to take the stone was killed by the statue. Even their corpses vanished. No one tries to take it anymore. I think that’s why Meadhbh didn’t take it.”

  “Hmm . . .”

  “Let me show you where it is,” the old man said. “You can at least see its beauty, even if you can’t take it. It’s suicide.” The Dwarf led Lee down a few flights of stairs and along a hallway until Lee was face to face with the statue of a nude Amazon he remembered from when he had encountered the first world stone fragment. The room appeared to be otherwise empty, but as soon as he took a step into it, the room filled with an abundance of different crafting supplies. There was every type of wood, metal, crystal, gem and stone that he could possibly imagine, along with a few he couldn’t, and there were even dozens of different types of rocks and piles of sand decorating the sides of the room.

  “The one with you may not enter,” the statue said as Lee stepped further into the room.

  The old man behind him froze, quickly backing away.

  “And I may, right?” Lee remembered that, last time, the other statue had allowed only him to approach.

  “Indeed. You, as the qualified bearer of his will and the blood of his chosen who has entered into the Temple of the Creator may not leave until your third gift is tested,” the statue answered.

  “My third?” Lee blinked in confusion. “I have only been tested once.”

  The statue didn’t respond for a moment. “You carry two stones, proof of your two gifts. Your first gift, the gift of the father, was your wit. It has been tested. Your second gift, the gift of the mother, was your heart’s regret. It has resonated. Now, you may not leave until your third gift is tested.”

  Lee stopped the statue and asked quickly, “If one cannot leave until their gift is tested, then how did she, the tiger one, walk out?”

  “She passed the test; she rejected the stone,” the statue responded. “If she had failed the test, then I would have removed the stain from her patron’s name, as I will you if you prove yourself unworthy.”

  Crap. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but it wasn’t entirely unexpected either. He had been in one of these temples before, and the stakes had been the same then as they were now.

  “So, what’s my test?”

  The statue turned to the side and gently placed the world stone fragment into a stone wall as smoothly as if it were being dropped into water. A spring of lava spewed forth from where her hands were withdrawn, flowing down onto the stone floor before vanishing into the ground. It was like a weak sink faucet had been turned on and left running as the lava poured out endlessly yet never showed any signs of accumulating

  “Your test is simple,” the statue spoke. “Before twenty-four hours have passed, you must capture the cycling liquid in a container. Your vessel must be able to withstand the fury of its heat until the liquid cools. You may not use the water directly to lower the temperature of the cycling liquid, and as soon as the liquid re-enters the earth, its temperature will be restored.

  “What water?” Lee asked, looking around and only seeing ingredients, but as soon as he asked, water sprung forth from one of the walls, disappearing to the ground in the same manner as the lava.

  Lee looked at the stream, examining it at first. Other than how high it was and how much fell at any given time, he couldn’t make heads or tails of what type of container he would need to make or how big it would need to be. He knew that it would help him calculate it all out if he could measure how long the stream lasted before the recycle, but when he took a metal sheet and tried to use it to interrupt the flow, the metal began to melt nearly instantly. Within ten seconds, the thin metal sheet he was using to test it was completely melted, and the loop was back. Lee knew that iron has a very high melting point, but it was irrelevant because its thermal conductivity was so high that the heat from the liquid was able to transfer to the iron nearly instantaneously. Because of this, even though iron has a much higher melting point than stones, it would take much longer for stones to melt or be impacted by heat than iron.

  Lee then looked around at the materials and tried to make a decision of what to do and how to approach the problem. He knew he had two ways to handle it: the first was to try and increase the mass of the metal so that it would take much longer to melt. This was actually probably a good decision, because if he could make a large enough block, then there was a chance that, while the top part might melt a little, the total energy wouldn’t exceed what the iron could handle. The problem with this option was Lee didn’t have the mana needed to meld the entire thing together. The iron came in ingots and sheets and would have to be fused together, and Lee didn’t know how to do that properly. There was the book, but without a forge, he still wasn’t sure how he could properly handle it.

  The next option was to take advantage of items that had the lowest thermal conductivity possible. This route seemed more feasible, but he didn’t exactly know how to make a stone in the shape that he wanted. Since a stone wasn’t a finished product, even with mana or energy, he wouldn’t be able to shape it into what he wanted. This would mean that he’d have to handcraft the entire channel, and if it didn’t work, that would eat far too much of his time.

  Wait, how do they do this in forges? Lee thought as he stared at the materials
around him. There is no way they have heats strong enough to melt metal and lack a way to hold it, Lee grumbled as he pulled out the book. Book, tell me what they use in forges for the sides, to hold the coals. But nothing showed up. Instead, he decided to go about it a different way and began to picture the brick on a forge he had seen in a picture as he flipped through the book. This time, a series of refractory brick instructions appeared in front of him in the book. They each had slightly different ratios but also seemed easy enough to make.

  After looking through the instructions, he found one that had a very low time to set if magic was used, but each brick would still have to be set out and made individually. For Lee, this meant he’d have to make a ton of cases for the bricks as they set, so while reading the page, he began to craft and put together the wooden cases for many of them. As he was doing that, he went over the ratios he’d need for the mixing: seven-parts vermiculite, seven-parts perlite, two-parts cement and four-parts sand. As he wondered what those were and how to get them and identify them, he found that the game system provided giant stacks of the material for him. He then began mixing the parts together in a pile, adding water as needed, and getting a consistency that looked close to the one in the book, he sat back and checked the progress. It wasn’t setting fast, so he used a little spirit energy to heat it up internally, testing if he could speed up the process.

  After finally completing an adequate refractory brick, Lee went to the stream to test it. His hopes weren’t that high after failing so many times and watching the iron he had smithed earlier melt so quickly. Yet, not wanting to jinx himself, he held his breath and said a little prayer as he pushed the brick into the stream of liquid. Surprisingly . . . it didn’t burn. Go, go, basic science, Lee thought as he watched the ceramic creation withstand the heat quite well.

  “System, how much time do I have left before twenty-four hours are up?” Lee asked.

  Only hours have passed since you began this trial. You are making great time with all things considered. Perhaps you could show this dedication toward picking out economic- and utility-based projects for Satterfield?

  “You’re never going to let that go, are you?” Lee groaned as he held the brick under the liquid. It wasn’t instant, but after a few minutes, he could tell that the brick was heating up and would soon melt. Okay, so there is a timer, Lee realized as he pulled the brick back and looked at the scorch marks left around the line where the material had begun to melt.

  Alright, time for step two. With his first success in mind, he began making more and more batches of fire bricks and mortar. Less than thirty minutes into his project, he received an update from the system.

  Your mastery of Masonry has progressed from the rank of Initiate Level 1 to the rank of Initiate Level 2. Masonry now allows for faster stoneworking, the production of more durable bricks with greater resistance to the elements and the creation of stronger mortar.

  Due to improving Masonry, you have received +1 Intelligence. Current Intelligence: 212.

  I see. So, it improves durability and resistance to elements . . . which likely means temperature, which will be even more useful for this challenge in particular. Lee continued to work at making the bricks, one after the other, and by the time he was finished, his Masonry was at Initiate Level 4, and all of his other skills had improved in the process.

  Alright, now I just need to organize this in such a way that one brick doesn’t have to withstand the entire stream. He was fairly certain that a single brick was would likely melt or burn if exposed to the lava for too long. The only problem was that he didn’t know how long that actually was. That was the whole reason he had spent so much time churning out bricks. If the stream of lava somehow changed, if it suddenly increased in volume, he’d be screwed. Further, he had no idea how much lava was actually contained within the wall. He could only see a small trickle where it ran out of the stone structure, and there was no telling how much might be contained within it that hadn’t flowed out yet.

  To handle this issue, he created separate paths, each one angled slightly with a chiseled-out route through the brick for the stream to run on. He had the paths travel an extremely-long distance at a very shallow angle that was steep enough to move the liquid but made the journey take a very long time. All eight of the paths then met up at the bottom in a single large collection basin that took up a significant portion of one of the room’s corners with a wide surface area. He had originally thought to have his channels empty into separate tanks, but he was concerned by the fact that the statue had insisted on only using a single vessel to hold the liquid until it cooled. Lastly, he carved out several firebrick funnels that would allow him to direct the flow of the liquid into the paths one at a time.

  With all of the preparations in place, he walked up to the stream and used one of the funnels to push the lava into the first channel. He only let thirty seconds pass before removing that funnel and placing the next one under the stream, directing the lava down another path. He then repeated the cycle every thirty seconds until roughly nine minutes had passed. At that point, the liquid ran out.

  He was rather glad that he had chosen to alternate the streams, as nine minutes on any one brick would have likely melted it through. When he was done directing the liquid, however, he still had to wait a while for the various channels to finish emptying out into the pool. He could tell that the lava had already begun to cool some by the time it reached the pool based on its darker color, and it continued to darken little by little until it turned a solid black. There was a slight pause as the last of the lava fully hardened into stone, and then yellow lines of light danced across the thin layer of black stone. They sparkled brilliantly for a moment before breaking through the dark substance completely. The black stone fragments fell away and disappeared in the dazzling light like a shadow escaping the sun, and when the light faded, all that remained was a single yellow stone in the middle of the container Lee had made. It was the world stone fragment. The piece of stone was bound to Lee within seconds, and he felt the noticeable change as all three of his primary stats and his Intelligence were boosted by the item.

  “Now that you have passed the test, you may ask a question of me, as is the custom of our temple,” the statue said, its eyes shining brightly as Lee picked up the fragment. “I shall answer your inquiry to the extent that I am allowed by the rules of the Creator.”

  “Hmm . . .” Lee sat there, wondering how to handle this. He wanted to ask why he wasn’t given three questions, but he was worried that it would be treated as a question and that he’d be reduced to zero questions total. That was a terrible cliché, and one that always caused him to facepalm whenever he saw it, so he didn’t want to fall victim to it himself. There were only two burning questions, both of which he desperately wanted answered. One was about the system, and the other was about whether or not the NPCs were NPCs or people. Whether or not they were real people.

  Unfortunately, Lee knew that he would have trouble taking the answer to the second question, no matter what the answer was, so he went with the first one. “What exactly is the system that it seems to have both a personality and will of its own?”

  The statue glowed for a few seconds, and finally, an answer was generated: “I am not allowed to divulge the nature or who of your system.”

  Lee’s mouth hung open. Seriously? Are you really telling me I wasted my question? He almost voiced the question out loud, but he realized that the answer had given him more than he expected. The statue had said it couldn’t divulge either ‘the nature or the who’ of the system. The who . . . Lee wondered again as he stared at the most recent system notification, the one notifying him about the new stats he had received. Interesting, he thought, turning around and leaving the room.

  The old man had been watching him the entire time, and as Lee exited the much-feared place, the Dwarf’s mouth practically hit the floor.

  “You . . . You wanted us to teach you? I’ve never seen stonework like that, or metalwork
for that matter, and . . . you’re alive! You lived and took the gem! That’s amazing!” The old Dwarf’s excessive enthusiasm bubbled out into an unexpected joyous display, and he practically jumped in place. “You lived and took the gem! No one’s ever done that!”

  Well, at least one person had the chance, Lee thought ruefully as he remembered that Meadhbh had passed the trial and rejected its gift. An uncomfortable knot formed in his stomach as he thought about that. Why would she reject the gift? If she had gotten the stone, wouldn’t she be that much stronger? Should I be counting my blessings since that 5% increase in her primary stats might very well have spelled out my death?

  He rounded a corner and saw Jade, who was walking up to him with a big grin on her face and holding up what looked like a rat tail. Do I even want to know?

  “Well, kid,” Jade said as she tossed the rat tail to Lee. “I got you a brand new Krunklerump for your birthday.”

  “You did? How much did that run us?” Lee’s eyes opened wide with joy. He hadn’t seen the stables for the town, but he knew that a mount couldn’t be common up here. They had to be rare, which meant they had to be expensive.

  “Nothing. I told you I was going to have a drinking competition, right? Well, that’s exactly what I did. I went to the bar and found the biggest, gruffest-looking Dwarf I could and told him he was worse than a teetotaling Aes Sidhe when it came to drinking. He got all huffy and challenged me to a drinking contest, and one thing led to another, and now I’m the proud owner of three Krunklerumps, nearly thirty gold and a ton of rations. They weren’t quick to bet those, but given they lost half their town, who can blame them, right?” Jade seemed rather mirthful as she told her story. “Oh, also, Brigid tried to help with the drinking competition when I told her it was to save people’s lives and defeat Meadhbh, so I had to carry her back to her room. If we leave tonight, you’re going to have to figure a way to wake her up or lead her Krunklerump. I am done putting in effort today.”