Sixth Realm

by Michael Chatfield

  "We match formations to the items, but they have to be in touch with the materials on a much higher degree. Something from nothing. While we are adding and enhancing what is already in front of us," Julilah said. Hearing and seeing the rhythmic strikes of the smiths they made the metals sing.

  They have such high body cultivation in order to work with the greatest flames and draw out more strength from their bodies. Their mana cultivation is equally high to cast spells to see what is happening within the metal and introduce mana. Their high cultivation in both areas allow them to create incredibly powerful items.

  ***

  Delilah and Jia Feng were sitting in Delilah's office, Egbert was sitting in a chair as well, he was wearing a jersey that the tailors had created on the second day of competition. The Jersey supported the Alva Academies. Though Egbert had taken it one step further, he had added flags showing his support of different crafters. He looked as if he was one massive collage of paper.

  Looks like Matt's casual words turned into something else.

  Egbert, why are you still wearing the jersey and flags?" Delilah asked. "The competitions ended two days ago."

  "Ahem, well, you see I might have been a little liberal with the glue I was using, you see the flags stuck to the jersey and some of the glue it went through the jersey and uh.. Well it might be stuck to my bones?"

  You can't be serious you glued everything to your body by mistake? How is this the guy operating the Dungeon core and the Library around here?

  She closed her eyes, taking a breath looking at Jia Feng.

  "The competition was a great success, we had about seventy percent of the students participating in the matches. Registration is up across both academies. Traders are talking to more of the crafters than before. Some people want to host competitions throughout the year to test out their skills," Jia Feng said.

  "Do you think that we will be ready for the next one in Vuzgal?"

  "I think that we will be ready, this was great for their confidence. As for how they will place I cannot give any guarantees and we need to keep in mind that there will be a lot of people that are trying to make Vuzgal look bad."

  "This is something that I am concerned about as well. Vuzgal's position while it looks stable on the outside, is teetering on an edge, with every competition people will think more or less of us. We need to do well to prove our strength and position to others."

  "Well it depends on the atmosphere doesn't it?" Egbert said, picking at his shirt.

  "What do you mean?" Delilah asked.

  "Well if we make it a competition of Vuzgal showing off their power to everyone, then it will be very hard to hold that position for a long time. If on the surface it is an exchange of pointers and to allow crafters to show their skills and teach one another, then on the surface, if we lose a few times then it will be nothing much. There are many crafters out there and it is good that we get to meet more powerful people. Vuzgal shows its power in being able to tempt these people. Play the neutral party with good rewards, pleased to invite anyone and everyone."

  "That could work," Delilah said.

  "Though, we should never let our experts ever fight in these competitions," Egbert said seriously, looking up. "If our experts enter the field, then all of the academy's honor will be on their shoulders. If we make this a competition of the juniors, do it by age, then we could have an edge. If we have all kinds of people coming in and challenging us. We'll fall apart. A two hundred year old skeleton challenging us? We have been studying for just a few years, as our crafters fall people will look down on us. We need to manipulate the rules that way to appear stronger. Otherwise we reserve our strength and stop our strongest from competing, that way we are mysterious and we have unknown depths. Personally I think we shouldn't let our people compete, we can control everything more."

  "They aren't going to be happy, they want to compete and show off their power," Jia Feng said.

  "Well we have a stadium here no?" Egbert said.

  "This is Alva, even if they fail here, then it is not in the eyes of outsiders," Delilah agreed.

  "Okay," Jia Feng agreed hesitantly.

  "Everything that we do outside of the dungeon is under the greatest scrutiny, we have to watch our steps. Projecting our strength outward gives us cover."

  "I know, I keep forgetting just how the Ten Realms operates after spending so much time in Alva."

  Chapter: Rudimentary design

  Rugrat quenched the metal, steam rose up around him as he put it on the side. He checked the different blueprints to the weapon.

  It was formed from a single piece of metal.

  As it cooled, Rugrat felt experience entering his body. He grimaced as there were no notifications telling him he had reached the Expert level.

  If I can prove its effectiveness, then I can learn more formations and make them stronger next time!

  “A bull pup?” Erik said. Cracking open an eye, the mana fluctuations in the smithy seemed to slow down as Rugrat felt the suction force from Erik’s body decrease.

  “Longer barrel for greater acceleration,” Rugrat said. He had an integrated stock with a thumbhole, the magazine was seated to the rear near the shoulder. The barrel ran forward, reaching four separated pieces of metal with sections of runes with embedded gems to power them.

  Looking at it Rugrat felt proud, his blood was surging in his ears.

  He pulled out a round, it was formed from Mortal Mana stone and he’d traced formations upon its surface.

  “I don’t know complex runes but this should be enough! These higher-level smithy rooms, even here in this dungeon have testing grounds, should we see how it does?” Rugrat asked.

  “Right behind you,” Erik laughed, eager to see the power of the weapon.

  Rugrat opened a door and they walked into a large sturdy room reinforced with formations with targets along one side of the wall.

  He pulled out a vice and put the rifle into the vice. They retreated back Rugrat putting down a mana shield.

  “Alright lets give it a shot,” Rugrat said with a grin, he pulled the string attached to the trigger.

  Power flushed through the rifle, the metal started to melt, the runes distorted and the gems exploded from the power coursing through it. The round amplified the power all around it, turning into one large bomb before it exploded. Metal shot off in all directions, embedding in the walls and the ceiling, striking the mana barrier.

  “Ah, my formation skill isn’t that high,” Rugrat said.

  “No worries, creating takes time,” Erik said, patting his shoulder. “Come on, tomorrow we’re heading to the surface. We’ve got a meal with everyone else tonight.”

  Rugrat looked at the smoking ruin and nodded, letting out a sigh.

  “Yeah I only worked on it for two days, my speed is getting better at least,” Rugrat deactivated the formation and started to clear up the remnants of the rifle. Erik bent to give him a hand.

  “You know the crafting system is prejudice as hell,” Erik said.

  “Huh?” Rugrat said and looked over.

  “Look at the Ten Realms, you only progress if you take on higher challenges, facing a beast on our level is some experience, but if we fight a creature above our level we can rank up much faster, anything below our level and it’s not even worth it. Crafting is geared towards one person making powerful artifacts. Mainly weapons and defensive items.” Erik rested on his knee. “Like if you were to craft a spoon of the Novice level and a spoon of the Expert level, is there a need?”

  “What do you mean?” Rugrat asked.

  “A spoon is a spoon, you use it to eat. A Novice spoon might be rough, but it works. An Expert level spoon, it works, it might look amazing, be reinforced, but the ability to have more formations, have an innate ability it doesn’t need them. Nearly all crafters make weapons and armor, but they could as easily make high-level spoons. Though making spoons isn’t glamorous, there are a few additions that can be useful, and one spoon is pret
ty useless. Mass production is undervalued, few crafters do it because mass production is synonymous with crap and bad items that are liable to break.”

  The two of them sank into thought.

  “When you think about it, the weapons, the armor the ammunition we used on Earth, hell even the vehicles, all of them were mass-produced,” Rugrat said. “We’ve started that with the ammunition factories and production lines to create armor, concoctions and weapons.”

  “In the Ten Realms Formation Masters work with others, but the other crafters rarely work with one another. Smiths might make cauldrons for Alchemists, but they don’t make armor that will inject concoctions into a person’s body so they don’t have to drink liters of potions,” Erik said.

  “The people in Alva work together,” Rugrat said.

  “They do, to an extent, they don’t see the overall value in working together, they will use information from other crafts to advance their own, but there are only a handful of projects where there are different departments working together,” Erik said. “Simply, the ten realms rewards skill levels to those that create. It doesn’t reward people who keep doing it.”

  “If we could promote them working together then we might make more useful items, but then it comes to what you said, if people aren’t working on crafting items that are of a higher level, then their crafting levels are going to stagnate. We could have hundreds of Journeyman and not one Expert,” Rugrat said.

  “Well, that is the Ten Realms problem, not ours,” Erik said. “Though I guess we haven’t tested out one thing. If we have all of those low end parts put together to create something more, like all the parts in a truck or a weapon, if that item at the end is a higher level than the sum of its parts, will one’s skill level increase? For mass producing, the only thing that we can reward people with is more money. Entice them with that and then have factories built to produce the items they put forward. A thriving business creating and managing factories.”

  “Yeah”, Rugrtat said not really listening to what Erik was saying. He continued to clean up the rest of the failed experiment, wondering just what the issues were .

  I’ll need to check with the Formation Masters and see what they think of this.

  ***

  Lucinda was the last to arrive.

  “Okay, let’s get out of here,” Erik said. The group headed out of the inn that they had been staying in and headed over to the elevator that rose up above, taking them out of the dungeon.

  After paying the fee, they all boarded a large elevator. They could see through the iron bars of the elevator, looking out over the dungeon as the rose up.

  “Dungeons for training grounds, the Ten Realms are extreme,” Yuli said. She glanced over to a group of students that were in one corner, their armor and gear were badly dented and broken, but they held their heads high, in the depths of the dungeon there were plenty of ways a person could advance. There were plenty of fights to be found, powerful beasts and resources were abundant. The Dungeon was a land of death, but it was also a land of opportunities.

  “In the Fourth Realm the dungeons are too small and entire sects are willing to lay waste to one another so that they can claim them and increase their strength. Here, they're Academy training grounds. Why don’t people fight over them more?” Tian Cui asked.

  “They do, just instead of waging wars, they wage tournaments, using the challenges to take resources and power from one another. Betting is the way that resources and places are taken from fone another. If someone is unwilling to bet, unwilling to prove their strength then others will use that weakness and attack them through different means. Academies thrive here. the academies with the strongest cultivators, the largest and most powerful dungeon areas, they win,” Storbon said.

  Light came in from above as they all covered their eyes at the brightness. Erik felt a headache coming on as he squinted, it was more sun than he had seen in weeks.

  The noise came next as they heard the bustle of the massive city around them.

  The elevator bounced and locked, the gates opening in front of them as the press of people on the elevator walked off.

  They were checked by the guards there and allowed past the defenses into the campus of the Arcane Academy Army.

  There were people marching into the elevators, classes of fighters that were on a research trip led by a senior or a teacher.

  “The academy system is similar to a sect, the more missions one completes, or the ways that they assist the school, then they will gain more credits that can be used to go to classes, to buy equipment or access to higher-level books and resources. If you earn enough then you can increase your standing, going from the basic, to the advanced, elite and expert level classes with increasingly powerful professors. The competition is strong and people are looking to take the spots of one another all the time,” Lucinda said.

  “And I thought hearing about regular college was hard,” Rugrat said.

  “Alright, we need to head to where Melika’s Tutor is located,” Erik said.

  No one argued, they had left the people at Knugrith for two reasons: they didn’t want them to alert Lord Vinters or whoever was behind what had happened at the tower. They also didn’t have any kind of debt to these people. If they kept them along longer then they might become more trouble than they were worth. Also it would be expensive, if they brought them along, they would have to pay for their travel. People in the Ten Realms were always looking for an advantage. Melika’s request had generated a Ten Realms quest, the experience was always useful and it gained their interest.

  They got onto their mounts and headed to where Melika and her Tutor had been staying.

  ***

  Lee Perrin was reviewing the information that his students had compiled.

  “So it looks like this has been going on for some time and that people are being kidnapped and taken down to the Dungeon for some reason. We don’t know who the group is.”

  “It has to be the Faded scroll!” One yelled out.

  “We don’t know that for sure. The evidence seems to be going that way but we can’t just barge in there and then demand answers, they are still an academy,” Lee said, silencing the large man with a look as he meekly sat back down in his chair.

  “Now,” Lee was interrupted by his sound transmission device, he held it up and listened to it.

  “Tutor a group of people showed up to the inn you were staying at, they have a girl matching Melika’s description with them!”

  Lee’s chair fell to the floor as he was running out of the room.

  The others looked at one another and then started to run after him.

  ***

  “There was a man like that here a couple of days ago, a group of people arrived and took him away though,” the innkeeper said to the group.

  Melika deflated, looking defeated.

  “Thank you for your time,” Erik said and turned away from the bar, the group headed out of the inn, standing in the street.

  “So, what do we do now?” Lucinda asked.

  “Can you track him with your beasts?” Erik asked.

  “It might take me some time, I would need to have them sniff around his room and the innkeeper said he rented it out to someone new already,” Lucinda shrugged.

  “Stop right there!” A voice came from a rooftop. The group reached under their cloaks, readying their weapons, since coming back from the dungeon they were jumpy and distinctly aware that they were not in Alva or Vuzgal.

  They all looked at a ranger standing on a roof.

  “Incoming,” Rugrat said as he started to gather mana.

  Yuli threw down a formation array. Erik exercised his Earth mana and tore the ground apart, creating broken ground and defenses towards the sound of running feet. Lucinda released birds that took off into the sky.

  “Yuli and Melika in the center. Tian Cui prepare to flank. Rugrat provide support but get ready to use George and get into the sky. Meng, cover the East, Erik the South, I’ll
take the North, Lucinda you have the West, prepare to break off and run, rally point three,” Storbon rapid-fired orders as they organized, flowing together, he was no longer nervous about ordering Erik and Rugrat around.

  They pulled out their mounts, getting on their backs as people appeared in the streets.

  Erik and Rugrat were drawing in as much mana as possible into their mana channels, overloading themselves to be ready for the fight.

  There were over a dozen people who circled them, pinning them against the inn.

  “They’re all high levels, at least level Fifty-Five. Some, I can’t even get a reading on, they’re using something to hide their levels. Many have a decent mana cultivations, all of them have established their mana core,” Rugrat said.

  “There are two with Bodies like Iron, Seven with Bodies like Stone, one of them has reached Body of Diamond,” Erik’s words chilled the air.

  These were all experts in the Ten Realms with high levels and cultivation.

  A man stepped out from among the people, he looked utterly unremarkable but Erik’s eyes thinned.

  Body of a Beast? Is he a human or a beast in human form? Erik automatically thought of Elder Fred who had been a tree but then taken on a human form. Thinking of the terrifying power that he had wielded, Erik readied himself.

  He pulled on his helmet as did the rest of the group, their rifles didn’t waver from their targets.

  “Tutor!” Melika said and struggled from Yuli’s hands.

  She ran out into the middle of the two groups. Erik felt something go cold inside but no one ran out. If they did then they would break their defense.

  The unremarkable man’s face bloomed into a smile as he caught Melika and studied her.