“That… was not something that’s supposed to have happened?”
“Not really, no. It was always possible, but the authority of Hell is only granted to those who the current ruler chooses. Like the Archangels of Heaven, chosen by the King. Essentially, you were placed on the same level as one of my generals.”
“Well, you registered my allegiance to Hell when you did that, so that I would be both protected and bound by the contract. So, maybe that’s what made it possible? Since technically I am considered as a resident of Hell.”
Lilith nodded to my theory. “That might be it, yeah. I guess that means you would also become Unbound if you rejected Hell.”
“Well, then it’s a good thing I like having you guys as my allies. Besides, this place isn’t so bad. The seven sin districts you set up are actually quite enjoyable.”
Smirking a bit, Lilith nodded again. “I thought you’d like it. They were based on your mortal concepts after all. Though those might have come from the angels at first, which makes it even more ironic.”
“Yeah. Oh, and sorry, but I might not be summoning you to the mortal world for a little while.” At her pained expression, I quickly explained. “No, it’s not that I don’t want to rely on you. After the incident with the dragon, I’m going to spend some time traveling to learn about this world before I set off on any more grand adventures.”
Lilith took a moment to process this, and then nodded. “Okay… just remember to call me any time you need me.”
“I will. And I’ll still be coming to visit now and then, even if it’s just to stay the night.”
“You better! I haven’t even shown you some of the spas in the Sloth district!” Lilith grinned widely at that idea, making me chuckle. Levy, on the other hand, slapped her palm to her face and groaned. “It’s a good idea, though. If you want to live in this world, rather than your own, you need to learn more about it. I could probably teach you a lot, but I think it would be best if you experienced it on your own.”
“Speaking of which, you were going to give me a book on advanced enchanting? I solved your puzzle about the diagram, but I still don’t know how to enhance the detection crystal for this ship.” The Unity possesses a crystal with a modified scrying spell that monitors the area around the ship up to a single kilometer. Since my encounter with some pirates, I had decided it was necessary to expand that by a considerable margin.
“Oh! Right! I’ll have it delivered here before you leave tomorrow! Sorry, given what’s been happening lately, I completely forgot about it. I’ll throw in a book on demonic forging as well.”
“Thanks. I did sort of just come back from the dead, so it’s understandable that things like that are forgotten. And between the magical enhancements and my own abilities, the Unity should be one of the strongest ships in the sea. I’ll just need to worry when other ships have mages on them as well that can counter me.”
“Well, if you run into trouble that you can’t handle, don’t hesitate to use your bigger magic, or to summon me okay?” When I nodded, she continued. “And you should check in with Dariel too. She liked to scry on you, so when she couldn’t find you after getting back to her own people she probably became worried.”
“Yeah. I can’t summon her anymore either unless I visit, so I planned to stop there at some point. Even if it’s just teleporting there long enough to take care of that and then heading back.”
Lilith nodded, giving me a quick hug before picking Levy up and setting her on her shoulders to run off. “Take care! I still expect a lot of interesting things from you!” She laughed with Levy as the two quickly vanished into the distance.
Really, so many people think that I’ll be interesting. I’m just going to run around and learn about the lore of this world.
Chapter 4
That night, we stayed in our ship to make sure we had everything we needed to leave in the morning. When I told Denise my plan to learn the different facts about this world rather than simply adventure in it, she seemed to like the idea. Of course, she was a bit disappointed that it meant she wouldn’t be able to fight as much. Has she become more violent suddenly?
In the morning, when we woke up the two books I had asked Lilith for were already prepared in my room. Most likely she had someone sneak them in while we slept. Right away, I began reading the advanced enchanting book, looking for clues on how to amplify an existing enchantment.
It turned out that there were two methods to do it, an easy way and a hard way. The easy way required preparing an all new item using higher quality materials that would handle the magic more efficiently. This would definitely work to increase the effect of enchantments, but I don’t know what kind of material would work better than the current crystal…
The second, harder method was to use an enchanting technique that removed the magic from the item, filtered out the effect, and then applied it with a greater amount of magic. For this to work, the person performing the technique must be able to use more power than what was originally used in the enchantment. It was also a very delicate process to mix the effect in with the new magic, and should it fail the result will be a weaker enchantment, or possibly the loss of the effect altogether.
Unlike for applying a new advanced effect to an item, there was a single diagram that covered this amplification technique that was described in the book. From the complexity of it, you would think that this was the magical equivalent of brain surgery. I definitely had no confidence in my being able to pull this off at my level of skill.
Even if I did everything perfectly, sometimes in situations like this the system itself would work against you if you don’t have the right skills to qualify for what you want to do. Like if a novice tailor were to try to sew a marvelous dress. The only way to compensate for the lack of trained skill is genuine time and effort, but that was not possible for this technique that could fail if it took too long.
As such, I decided to hold off on trying this until my skill with enchanting rose to the point where I was confident that I could pull it off. Next up was the demonic crafting book. It was immediately obvious that it wasn’t written for beginners, so I didn’t even really try to understand it. I just set the book aside and sighed. “I guess I should learn a craft when we get to the town…”
Denise, who had been silently watching me, smiled. “Oh? You’ve found things you really can’t do?”
I couldn’t help but chuckle, raising my head to look at her. “You know, I may seem strong, but considering how spread out my abilities are, my average power is far below a master level, or even an advanced level.” It was true, the average level of my talents was only ten. So, although my overall level appeared high, the only thing that matched it was my stats.
“Eh? Is that true? You aren’t just saying that?”
“It’s true. Your average power for your skills is at least a quarter beyond mine, since you are more focused. At our level, someone truly focused on just one or two things might be seen as nearly undefeatable.” Given that we were above level 150, and that the level of a ‘master’ was 30 in any given talent, it would take someone that has mastered five talents just to reach our level. Of course, leveling a talent becomes harder the higher it is, so builds like ours with more low level abilities will probably be common.
I had originally hoped to have at least mastered one of my talents by the time I reached this level, but right now I had three stuck at twenty-five. Not only that, but my next highest was only seventeen. It would take a good while yet before I managed to complete the first step of the Archmage’s path.
Thinking of that, I began wondering how it was going for Xiao, the second mage among the foreigners. Unlike myself who had gone the path of the Archmage, Xiao went the path of an elementalist. I was a bit disappointed in him though, because even though he had to have put a good deal of effort in just to get the Mage title, he still isn’t taking this place seriously. That, and I was disappointed in his ‘Frozen Flame’ spell.
Aft
er I had learned of Xiao, I contacted him with high hopes of making a potential friend and ally among the foreigners. His attitude quickly dashed any of those hopes, and the easiest way I could describe him was a glory hound. I’d bet the only reason he even went to be a Mage was because he heard it couldn’t be done. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had abandoned progressing his magic and started taking up another profession now.
Well, I can’t really complain about that. Thanks to hiding my real abilities, I was pretending to be an arcane archer, using my Lesser Creation to make bows and arrows that I could use for my spells. Since the magic assisted my aim, I almost never missed, but my firing speed was several times lower than a true archer like Denise. I could only make up for it by creating arrows with spell runes etched into them, so that I could fire off my magic through the bow.
By the way, out of some desire to punish myself I also made a pair of revolvers… but then Denise pointed out that I wanted to keep a low profile, and revolvers were anything but that. So, I had the design for them in my head, sadly unused. Maybe one day I could bring it out.
While thinking over this increasingly depressing train of thought, a very welcomed message appeared in front of me and immediately brightened my mood.
The ‘Curse of Revival’ has expired. All of your stats have returned to their normal values.
“Oh, did something good happen?” Denise decided to speak up again, smiling to me.
“Yeah. Vacation’s over, and it’s time to head off.” We were in a dark enough area that I’m sure Lilith heard it, and I knew for a fact Levy had.
Come back soon! I heard the thought sent to my head, and smirked.
Yeah, yeah. I’ll be back, Levy.
With that, I took command of the ship, spreading out my magic to untie the ropes from the dock, raise the anchor, and steer us out towards the huge gate. It was only now that I realized… “I could have been training my magic this entire time!”
Two of my talents, Mana Pool and Mana Recovery, are difficult to train purely because of my insane amount of mana. But with my stats all halved, it would have been so much easier. I could have gained several levels with those if I had thought about it! Next to me, Denise began laughing uncontrollably, gripping her sides.
“Really.. you… Well, I guess you needed a vacation.”
“Yeah, yeah… if that happens again, I’m not letting the opportunity pass me by.” At that comment, Denise shot me a sharp look. “Not that I’m looking for it to happen again, mind you.”
“That’s better. So, where are we heading?”
“The last aquatic gate I used was about a day outside of Thurgil, so it should connect there. Let’s just hope the area is clear enough that we can get away with it.”
“Now you think about this?”
“Well, we don’t really have a lot of options, right? Hell Gates are pretty rare.” Extending a hand towards the large black gate, I sent a spark of magic out to activate it and connect us to the location I wanted. Sure enough, the gate opened up after a few moments and we sailed through.
Next time, I’ll think better about things like this, I swear. When we came out, we were not in empty waters, because there were half a dozen ships in plain view. “See? This is what I was talking about.”
“Well, at least they aren’t pirates…” The ships around us all appeared to be transport or trade ships. None of them were as big as my galleon, so they likely weren’t made for combat. Of course, that meant that we wouldn’t be able to outrun them as easily if they tried to chase us.
Thankfully that fear was unfunded, because the ships couldn’t seem to get away from us fast enough. Something about a galleon appearing out of a massive black gate that rose up in the middle of the sea scared them away. Looking to Denise, I smiled. “This is totally going to become an urban legend, and we will never confirm it was us.”
Smirking, she shook her head. “Yeah, fine.”
Smiling to Denise, I moved us on a course away from the ships, and the black gate sank back into the sea behind us. “I’ll go ahead and call Dariel.” Turning to walk inside, I left for the captain’s quarter while activating the Message spell.
“Hello..?” Her voice was cautious, as if she wasn’t entirely sure it was me. Well, how many other people call you like this?
“Hey, Dariel.”
“Hey! Where have you been? Did you go to train in Hell for the last week or something?”
“Not quite. Sorry I haven’t gotten in touch earlier, but after you left the island something happened. Denise and I were killed by that dragon, which was apparently just hiding underground.”
“Oh… I’m sorry… is she okay?”
“Yeah, I managed to do something about it. But, after I died, all of my summoning contracts were removed. So is it alright if I pop by the village some time to get it renewed?”
“Of course, you can visit any time you’d like. Where are you heading now?”
Glancing to the map on my wall, I studied it for a bit, noting the inhabited islands. I wanted a large one, but not the same one I dropped Kev at. It’d be best if I didn’t have to meet with him while I was training. “I’m thinking of taking up a craft skill, so I’ll first head to Kirrin and see if they have any crafting halls there.”
“Oh? What skill are you wanting to pick up?”
“That is a very good question. One to which I do not have an answer.” Honestly, I hadn’t given it much thought beyond ‘get a crafting skill’.
Dariel let out a laugh on the other end of the call. “Well, you don’t have much use for being a blacksmith, since both you and Denise use wooden weapons. How about a carpenter? Then you can make both bows and staves. Might even be able to make upgrades for your ship.”
“Hmm.. that sounds good. What other options are there?”
“Well, you could be a scribe, but that would be more likely to reveal your abilities as a mage. Then there are blacksmiths, that work metal into various items. And of course, tailors to make clothes, leatherworkers to work leathers and hides into armor.”
Thinking back, I recalled seeing the Scholar talent on Levy’s character window. Maybe that was the talent for a scribe? I’d have to ask next time I connect with Hell. “Yeah, I’ll pick up carpentry then, if I can. Maybe learn how to scribe in my spare time..”
Once I reveal myself as a mage, there will probably be quite a demand for certain spell scrolls, like teleportation. Scholars probably had an additional advantage as well, like translating ancient writings or something.
“Okay, well if you don’t find anything in Kirrin, you should visit Vinehaven. Elves are known for their skills with wood, you know?”
“I remember.” I smiled, thinking back to Denise’s elven bow. “I had planned to do that anyways. I’ve got a book on infernal crafting, so once I learn the basic methods I want to learn specialties like that and elven techniques.”
“My, my, you are really planning to go all out with this, aren’t you?”
“Of course. There’s no point in just doing something half way, is there?”
“Alright. Well, since you’re back I’ll be able to keep an eye on you again, but call me if you need any advice.”
“Will do. By the way, have you made any progress with that project?”
“Hmm? Oh… you mean that.” There was a grin in her voice when she replied. “I’ve just about gotten it worked out. I just need to increase the loop speed a bit more and it will be ready.”
After learning about Xiao’s ‘Frozen Flame’ spell, and how it was just a glorified ice spell, I described what a real frozen flame would be like to Denise. Since I had given her the one rune that would be needed to make a spell like that possible, she seems to have taken it upon herself to create the spell. “Very good. I hope I’ll be able to see the results eventually.”
“I’m sure you will. I’ve got to head out for patrol now, so I will have to go. Talk to you later!”
With that, we ended the call. Looking at the
map again, I began tracing a path between our current location and the large island Kirrin. As part of this ship’s enchantments, the map is directly linked to the autopilot function the ship possesses. All I have to do is trace the route I want to take and leave it alone. I also made sure to set the detection crystal to alert me if anything enters its range, aside from mundane fish of course.
The path to Kirrin would take at least three full days, as we had to navigate around several smaller islands to get to it. But it was the biggest inhabited island in the Shattered Realm aside from Thurgil. I’ll just tell Kev that he’s got to train for a while longer.
Looking out to the deck, it seems like Denise went under to visit Midnight. Since she wouldn’t be around to hold idle chatter with for a while, I figured it would be a good time to start my own training. Heading down to the gundeck, I sat beside one of the crates of cannonballs.
The Dive: Birth of a Hero Page 5