by Aleron Kong
Not bad for my first try, he thought with a grin. Not bad at all. Richter was an apprentice in Crafting, and he barely qualified for that status. That meant the quality of items he could make almost always fell within four ranks: Above Average, Well-Crafted, Exceptional, and Superb. It was much more likely that any item he created would fall into one of the lower ranks than the higher.
Making something exceptional was a great outcome. It not only increased the durability of the pouch; it also increased the strength of enchantment the pouch could hold. That was a bit of a relief. Even though Richter knew exactly how many enchantment points various quality arms and armor could take, he was much less familiar with the enchantment potential of crafted items.
All he knew about crafted items was that they could generally hold more soul stuff than forged items, like swords and shields. That was why rings and necklaces, though physically more delicate than an armored helm, could hold more powerful enchantments. Even if he didn’t know the exact numbers, having a higher quality pouch could only help. Between the exceptional quality and his Talent Latent Power, he just had to hope the small pouch could hold enough power to contain a dimensional space.
Richter was feeling very impressed with himself. At least until he read the accompanying prompt.
Using a high-quality material has increased the quality of your crafted item by +1 rank.
It meant he’d actually only made a Well-Crafted item. He didn’t let it steal his thunder. He’d still done a good job, and the result was what mattered after all. This thing was awesome! The pouch even had a weird trait of strengthening poisons. He didn’t actually have any poison so it wasn’t too useful right now, but that was okay. It was kind of like finding Marilyn Monroe’s sex tape on a Betamax. Useless, but still undeniably cool!
That bonus trait had nothing to do with his own efforts, but that was okay. Extra effects were why some artisans considered Crafting the strongest method of creating items; it was both a science and an art. Depending on the materials used, you could get weird and interesting effects.
There were generally held to be two approaches to Crafting. An example of the first was the Ring of Health he could create. Richter could only make that because of a Template. A Template was like a blueprint; anyone that followed its set instructions could make a magic ring. With a reasonable failure rate of course, depending on how skilled they were.
That was the “science” approach. The “art” path could create items with unique properties, but it could be prohibitively expensive. More than anything else, it required powerful base materials. It was much less reliable than following a Template, but it could make more powerful and unusual items. Also, having a Template was no small thing. They were as valued and coveted as high-tech blueprints were back on Earth. Not only were they expensive, but groups jealously guarded them, not wanting to have to compete with other crafters.
Of course, none of that really mattered at the current moment. The only thing on Richter’s mind was what came next. Namely, turning his pouch into a Bag of Holding. To do that, the malleable iron would need to be able to withstand the magical tension of creating a dimensional space.
Not just any material could be turned into a dimensional storage space after all. They defied the very laws of physics. How could a common material like leather contain forces like that? While the Enchantment Potential of an item told you how many Soul Points it could hold, it didn’t mean that the material would survive the process of accepting soul stuff. It was like pouring water into a container. A jar made of iron and one made of tissue paper might theoretically hold the same volume of liquid, but you wouldn’t want to try and drink out of the second one. He had to hope the malleable iron was up to the task.
With that in mind, he decided to expose the pouch to magic before using his Talent. It couldn’t hurt to trigger the malleable iron’s special property of boosted durability. With his wide range of magical skills, he had his pick, but he decided not to cast a spell of the Basic Elements. Most of his magic that could target the pouch was destructive. He had healing spells, but they wouldn’t lock on to inanimate objects. Deeper Magic had serious consequences and he wouldn’t use it lightly. Higher Energy magic was also out. The only one he knew was Chaos magic. The results of that couldn’t be predicted. It was in the name, right?
Instead, he employed a skill he’d barely used before: Mana Manipulation. When Hisako had aligned the mana channels in his body, it had hurt like grabbing a live wire with his butt cheeks. As fun as that sounded, he wouldn’t repeat the experience if he had a choice. Despite the pain, he had learned the spell Manifest Mana.
The spell and his skill would supposedly grow together, but he hadn’t had the time to invest in practicing it before now. This seemed like the perfect opportunity. At worst, the spell would cause one point of damage to the pouch. Even with the item’s current low durability, such paltry harm shouldn’t be a problem.
Before casting the spell, he made one last change to the pouch. Using the pincer as a stylus, he wrote three short lines of text. Grinning to himself at the result, he finally summoned his magic. A moment later, his hands glowed with blue light. Even before the spell connected, he could see wisps of power being absorbed by the pouch. At skill level one, each mana manifestation cost him 100 MP, but with his large mana pool that wasn’t a problem. He summoned the magic four more times in all, and was finally rewarded with a prompt.
The malleable iron of the Ironscorpion Pouch has increased in durability!
Checking, he could see that its durability had skyrocketed to 170/170. That was a higher durability than high steel armor. Now all that was left was what he did second best: enchanting. Richter placed three common stones onto the ground in front of him. Thanks to his new Tier 2 Talent, Expanded Soul, common souls were no longer limited to a base yield of 10 Soul Points. Each could yield between 10-17 points of soul stuff. Richter examined each in turn to see what he was dealing with.
The first two souls came from the juvenile scorpions. His Profession let him see that they both yielded 12 SPs. The last soul was from the adult scorpion he’d killed first. It provided 33% more for a grand total of 16. Without Expanded Soul, he would only have been able to get 30 Soul Points from the three souls. Now he had 40!
Richter checked the rest of the souls he’d captured. He quickly noticed that the points the juvenile scorpion souls offered were all at the lower end of the common soul spectrum. Several only provided ten SPs, and the best yield from the younger monsters were the two twelves he’d already laid out. In contrast, the adult was at the higher end of the common soul spectrum. He didn’t know if that was just a coincidence, or if it might poke a hole in his earlier assumption that a monster’s age didn’t affect the strength of its soul.
Total, he now had 40 Soul Points to work with. To max out the slots in his bag he needed fifty SPs. It might have been a problem, but thanks to his Tier 1 Talent, Increase Soul Stone Yield, that base number was increased by 25%. That gave him exactly what he needed. There was just one more task he needed to complete before he would be able to make his Bag of Holding.
While he’d been traveling through the tunnels, he’d been able to make empty soul stones with his Light magic. He’d either found rocks on the ground or he’d had the golem break off pieces protruding from the walls. It was easy to do that on the move. Making powdered crystal, on the other hand, was different. The Tier 2 Talent, Crystal Touch let him make the valuable substance, but it cost two hundred and fifty mana per attempt. Each try also took at least ten minutes. That was why he’d saved some of the rocks he’d gathered.
He couldn’t be sure that he’d succeed right out of the gate either. As always, when he’d bought the Talent he’d been provided with the knowledge, but only at a rudimentary level. In his experience, there was always something left out. He’d learned something since coming to The Land: knowing a thing and being able to make proper use of that knowledge are two very different things. Put another way, t
here is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
Richter settled into a comfortable lotus position and slowed his breathing. He tried to fall into the light trance state that let his mana refill faster. Before long, his mana pool was full once more. It hadn’t advanced his Meditation skill, but he figured practice couldn’t hurt. With that done, he placed a few simple rocks before him.
He decided to activate the Monocle of Niclewis. He was curious what the monocle would show him while he was making powdered crystal. Picking up a rock, he focused and accessed the power within.
Purchasing the Crystal Touch Talent had taught him that powdered crystal was a substance with highly concentrated mana. Everything in The Land, including the rock in his hands, possessed mana to a lesser or greater degree. To turn the stone into powdered crystal, he had to compress the mana inside the rock into as small a space as possible. Once the power was focused, his Talent would take over and transmute the rock into powdered crystal. Only with the crystal serving as both a bridge and spark could he enchant an item. It was his desire to understand the process in greater depth that had prompted him to equip the monocle.
For several minutes, nothing happened. It was only after focusing for a time that Richter began to think he could feel something, like a faint static charge. On a deep level, he knew he was feeling the rock’s ambient mana. The sensation was so faint that if he hadn’t been focusing, he might never have noticed it. In fact, at first, he’d thought it was only his imagination.
It took several more minutes of staring through the monocle before he saw anything. One of the reasons it took so long was that his mind was battling his own false preconceptions. When he’d thought about the stone containing mana, he’d been envisioning distinct pockets of magic. In truth, the energy was faint and diffuse, like sand in churned water. What he was looking at was so small and spread out as to be nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the rock. After realizing that, he switched tack. In cases where you couldn’t see your way forward, you just had to go by feel.
Richter had learned his lesson about trying to force his will on unknown magics and enchantments. Instead, he regulated his breathing. After another ten minutes, his consciousness was finally able to interact with the scant magic in the stone. Trying not to lose the connection, he started pulling the disparate motes of mana closer together. The stone grew warmer. His eyes widened with happy anticipation. It was starting to work!
Nope. It wasn’t.
With a sharp crack, the rock split in half. A second later, the two pieces grew softer. Two seconds after that, grey sand was falling between his fingers. His first attempt to make powdered crystal was a failure.
At least I didn’t wind up with a spike in my chest this time, he thought. Richter reached for another rock. This time his mind knew what it was looking for and the process of feeling the faint ambient mana went faster. He tried again to coalesce the stone’s energy, but slower this time. This time was a success, of sorts. It took a whole four seconds before the rock turned to sand.
For the next hour he tried various methods to make powdered crystal. He tried going slower or faster, exerting his will more forcefully or delicately, using bigger or smaller rocks. Each time, it resulted in failure. Richter didn’t give up though, and through it all he focused on the hazy mana in the stone. His trial and error helped him come to three conclusions.
One, if he was going to succeed, he needed to move the entire mana field of the rock all at once. Those were the only attempts that had shown any reasonable improvement. Moving only part of a stone’s mana particles caused an immediate imbalance and destroyed it.
Two, his power only worked on rocks smaller than a bowling ball. He’d initially had the thought that this might be a way he could tunnel through the walls, but trying to siphon mana from the stone around him had instantly created a major imbalance. Rather than disintegrate the rock, the power had fed back into him. The resulting headache had been awful. He wasn’t sure but he thought he might even have gone partially blind for a bit. Worse still, his Enchanting power had been blocked for an hour.
Mother Nature apparently didn’t like it when you fucked with her. Needless to say, he decided not to do that again. It was a shame, because it made logical sense to him that the larger the rock, the more mana particles he could draw on. That led to his last conclusion. If bigger rocks wouldn’t work, then he needed… better rocks. After that thought, he almost called himself a gyoti.
That was when his eyes fell on his golem. It was made of magical rock, wasn’t it? And wasn’t that exactly what he needed? Better rocks? Having made that mental leap, Richter was filled with excitement. He quickly ordered the golem to form a thin protrusion, and then snap it off. The quartz construct followed Richter’s instruction without reservation. It handed the broken piece to Richter.
The chaos lord looked at it excitedly, until two seconds later when the clouded-quartz appearance faded and it turned back into the same dull grey rock as the caverns. Richter stared at it ruefully, but thought he understood. When Sloth was made, the common material that formed its body had been transformed into clouded quartz by the golem’s energy matrix. Once cut off from that power source, any part that broke free would just turn back into the same, magicless common material. Sloth wasn’t the answer.
Sadly, trying to use soul stones just shattered the amber gems. Richter even resorted to trying with a filled gem. This time, the gem shattered and rainbow energy dissipated into the air. The waste hurt, but worse was that he didn’t know what else to do. After another hour of trying with various stones, Richter finally lost it. “Gah!” he spat in frustration. He was so close! All he needed was this damn powdered crystal. Why was this so hard? All he wanted to do was harness the fundamental powers of the universe so that he could fold time and space into a pocket dimension for his own personal needs. Was that so much to ask? Really!
He might have made more progress, but each attempt drained his MP by two hundred and fifty points. Even his high Wisdom needed seven minutes to recover that amount. That meant he could only make eight attempts an hour. Adding in his mishap of trying to convert an entire wall into powdered crystal, time passed far too quickly. While he tried to figure it out, he periodically felt that strange sense of unease in the pit of his stomach. No matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find a reason for it.
It would come and go, sometimes almost feeling like physical pain. Even casting Weak Detect Hostile Intent didn’t show anything, so he turned his mind back to the problem at hand. There had to be way to make powdered crystal.
He came up with nada, also known as bupkis. Richter struggled to think of another idea. He needed to clear his head. Seeing as he didn’t have a baseball bat to hold, he decided to take a lap instead. While he walked around the lair, he kept his monocle trained on the surrounding walls. The description of the glass device said that he could increase its sight abilities with practice.
The drain of 1 MP/min was negligible compared to his mana regen, and such a small amount of mana barely registered as mental strain. A higher mana cost would actually be good news at this point. If his capabilities with the epic item improved, the mana drain would increase as well. Sadly, it stayed at the bare minimum. Disappointingly, the monocle also showed that there was hardly any power in the surrounding stone.
Richter walked into several galleries off the main cave, but the result was the same. He even scanned over the remains of the scorpions’ previous victims. He wasn’t expecting to be able to use them to make powdered crystal, but had hoped that there would be something he could use. All he found was tattered skin and rotting meat. There was really only more thing in the lair. Sighing over his soon-to-be-lost skin, he went back down the hole to where he’d found the beanpods.
As soon as he got down to the bottom, he had to renew his magical light. Having to re-up his spell every couple of minutes had irritated him at first, until he realized how truly fortunate he was. His rare skills a
nd magics had saved his life down here more than once. Without his Light or Dark magic, he wouldn’t even be able to see. Those spells had kept him from falling to his death. There was also no doubt that he wouldn’t have survived his first monster attack if he hadn’t been able to see.
Without Life magic, he would have succumbed to his wounds long ago. Ichorpede acid would have eaten away at his body, and without his bloodline he would most likely have bled to death fighting the nesting stone slime. Without his Enchanting Profession he’d never have been able to create the golem or defeat the adult scorpion. Without his Cloud Running skill he wouldn’t have been able to navigate the crevasse to escape the ichorpede lair he’d first fallen into.
Each of his rare and precious powers had contributed to his survival. How many other people had such a large constellation of capabilities, even in The Land? In a way, it was almost like he’d been bred to survive in conditions like these. Richter shook his head with a faint smile on his face. His irritation was replaced by appreciation, and he cast his spell.
After summoning the white light, his gaze was immediately drawn to the white iron beanpod tree. Looking at it through the monocle for the first time, he was astonished at just how much energy it contained. Compared to the faint and diffuse energy flow of the rocks, the plant was lit up like a Christmas tree. On the outside, it looked withered and nondescript. On the inside, it had well-defined pathways of mana.
They traced along the small branches, continuously cycling between the wooden tips and the small trunk, flowing up to the top and then back down to the base. His gaze followed the light trail to where the plant grew out of the ground. Some of the roots of the iron plant had pierced up through the rocky ground. That meant there were small rocks that had been forced up during its growth. To Richter’s delight, they held a noticeably stronger glow of mana than the ones in the rest of the cave. The rocks’ energy was definitely lower than the plant’s, but it was still something!