Erick woke up as the sun crested the horizon and began to shine through the windows of the yurt; solid beams of pale yellow light crossed over his bed, filling the room with warm glows. He gave a great big yawn, and then he got up. Jane and Poi were awake, but at Erick’s appearance, those two went to their own beds, and Erick got to making some coffee.

The hot brew woke him up all the way.

For a while, he just sat on the front porch, sipping his drink, watching the sun rise. A few clouds hung high in the sky. It might rain in the afternoon, but for now, the air was clear, crisp, and a little bit cold. It was good.

To the further north lay the designated areas of other clans. Clan Pale Cow was to the west. Mostly, Erick’s little slice of the world was empty, for a good hundred meters in every direction... Except for about thirty meters to the east, where three groups of people had managed to spend the full night under the stars, waiting for Erick to wake so that they could talk to him. Now that Erick was awake, a few people from those groups met Erick’s eyes from across the way, and they started talking to each other about how ‘the archmage was up’ and ‘now we can talk to him’. Of course, layers of [Prismatic Ward] separated them from Erick’s space, but they pressed forward anyway, to stand right on the other side of the dense air. 

They were quite insistent, weren’t they? He had told them that he’d see them in the afternoon and Erick did not feel bad about this; he had already snooped on their applications. They were well within his mana sense, after all.

The first group wanted some [Exalted Rain] on their magical crops, hoping that Erick’s breakthrough in rain magic would allow them a similar breakthrough in raising ‘spiritual herbs’. They were not going to get their wish. If they truly needed [Exalted Rain] for their crops, they could contact the Church of Atunir. Erick had given the Goddess of Field and Fertility that magic months ago. Maybe they had tried, and failed to get a priestess of Atunir to work for them? Whatever the case, Erick wasn’t going to work for them, either.

The second group wanted to interview Erick for a book. That was way too much of a hassle. Not happening.

The third group needed Erick to kill some mist stone gluttons in a mine to the far west of Eralis. Their application promised Erick 25% of the profits of the mine for the next month. Wow! A whole 25%! Such generosity! Erick almost wanted to slap the petitioners. He was not going to waste his time to solve these people’s monetary problems, and for 25%? It was an insult, is what it was.

Erick sighed, swirling the steam from his cup of coffee.

And then he spoke through the light to the three groups, giving them each an individual reason why he was not going to help them. The farmers walked away, dejected, but they understood and accepted Erick’s reason for denial.

The biographers gave perfect bows and accepted Erick’s words of denial with perfect politeness, but they wanted to leave their card, anyway. Erick refused to take the card. This was accepted, as well, though with less perfect manners.

The trio of miners, two men and one woman, all started talking at once, trying to get Erick to overturn his decision. Erick managed to make out, “We got the primest claims with the deepest veins of Overworld ore that them wrought ain’t yet got to!” and, “It’s ours for the taking, but dem monsters are too much! You gotta help! That’s all you archmages’re fer, ain’t ya?” but the one that made Erick mad, was, “You help us! Or we’ll tell people you a Wizzard!”

Erick frowned. “Tell people whatever you wish, just don’t break your neck falling in the water.”

The three miners reappeared about a kilometer away, to the east, directly above one of the many empty pools that surrounded Ooloraptoor. Under the watchful gaze of Ophiel, to ensure that they didn’t break anything except for their pride, the miners made a great splash, disturbing the muck at the bottom of that pond as they struggled to regain their bearings. The three of them slipped half a dozen times before one of them got the bright idea to [Cleanse] the waters.

Cleaned, and yet wet, the three miners cursed the sky and Erick, too, as they made their way back to Erick’s yurt. Not ten minutes later, the three miners reappeared at the edge of Erick’s [Prismatic Ward]. They were not happy.

… Erick was a little bit happy, though. The miners looked messy, and it was kinda fun to dump them in the muck. Erick instantly crushed that small glee, not wanting to make a habit of dumping people in mud for his own enjoyment.

But it was a little bit fun!

It was less fun when the three miners attacked the dense air with explosions and conjured weapons, chipping away at the magic that kept them good thirty meters away from Erick.

Erick remained sitting on his captain’s chair; stunned.

Being attacked was not unbelievable. What was unbelievable, was that someone would ever try to attack with as little power as these three people seemed to posses. Seriously, those [Fireball]s were more air and flickering flames than any true threat. Their conjured weapons looked as dull as baseball bats, completely without the cutting power possible with a truly well-made sword, like what Jane could conjure.

Erick sat stunned for a full ten seconds, just watching the show.

Other people at distant yurts began to watch the show, too.

And then Erick egged on the attackers, for some bizarre reason, “Come on! That’s the best you got? That’s weak shit! No wonder you can’t clear out a glutton mine on your own!”

The mining trio briefly paused, and then they roared and started beating on the edge of his dense air even more. Every so often their swords glowed with [Strike]s of flame and frost and lightning, empowering the damage they did to his [Prismatic Ward], sending cracks racing through the protective magics. From the failing density of the Solid Ward, Erick guessed the miners were doing about a thousand points of damage per [Strike]. Only 250ish with a normal sword swing, though, for they could not sustain that many [Strike]s, and they were supplementing their attacks with many, many normal blows. Each [Strike] cost 40 Health, after all.

They certainly weren’t flagging, though. If anything, they looked to be speeding up their routine-like attacks. In that moment they truly looked like miners, hacking away at a wall. They were using swords though. Erick would have expected them to use pickaxes. Pickaxes would probably do better against [Prismatic Ward]. Meh. These people didn’t seem that bright.

Erick almost blipped them away again, but he decided it was more entertaining to see how long it took them to break his first layer of defenses. Oh, they’d get blipped away, for sure. But not yet.

There were a few obvious things Erick picked up as he watched the show. Each of these people were likely a Scion of Balance, and with the bare number of Stats in each category; 25 Strength, Vitality, Willpower, and Focus. This meant that they had 1500 Health and Mana and resource Regeneration. Erick could tell this much because they weren’t going all-out like a Scion of Focus or Vitality would; they were pacing themselves… Unless this was truly as good as they could fight?

They certainly did not have Classes, though; that much was easy to see. All of the skills on display were normal for many of the stronger people in this part of the world, and these people were perfectly normal ‘stronger people’. If they were actually strong, then they likely would have been able to go out and kill mist stone gluttons all on their own. They never would have come here, asking for his help.

A paranoid part of Erick guessed that these three attackers were a part of some ploy.

Erick recognized that paranoid —and likely correct— part of himself, and moved on.

These people were each putting out about a thousand damage per second, maybe 1200. They weren’t activating a [Strike] every Script Second, but they were attacking rather fast. After 30 seconds of attacking, though, Erick had to lower their estimated damage per second from a thousand, to maybe half that. [Prismatic Ward], when cast by Ophiel, offered roughly 78,000 points of defense. These three people attacking at 1000 damage per second would have had them broken through after only 26 seconds, but they had yet to break through the outermost layer after a full minute of attacking. They were about 3/4ths of the way through, though!

Too bad these people didn’t have better Skills.

And that was another thing. None of these people had [Ward Strike], which meant that they were truly bottom-of-the-barrel warriors, attacking him based on pure anger, or something. Erick wasn’t quite sure what they expected to get out of this assault. Perhaps they thought him unwilling to work with weaklings? This much was categorically untrue, for —and not to toot his own horn too much— Erick only worked with weaklings. And these people were certainly weak.

Erick decided to allow them a small victory before he ruined the rest of their day.

Swords clanged off of dense air, chipping it here and there, sending white cracks across the whole of the outer layer of spellwork like the thin shell of a frozen lake, almost ready to break. Suddenly, one of their [Strike]s sent a flaming crack up and across the density, fully breaking the [Prismatic Ward]. White glitter returned to the manasphere, revealing the second [Prismatic Ward] waiting right behind the first.

The trio of miners briefly cheered at their own success, and then they stopped cheering.

And then Erick had an Ophiel expend himself to recast the outermost layer of dense air with the exact same strength as before. He spent 75 mana to create 78,000 points of defense and to crush the hopes of three upstart miners. A good bargain, if ever there was one.

The miners’ faces fell, as they realized they had no hope of getting through Erick’s power.

Onlookers from Pale Cow laughed from the porches of their own yurts; their cackles and woots filling the cool morning air like the sounds of roosters crowing to greet the sun.

And then Erick blipped the miners to a different mudhole, further south of the one they [Cleanse]d.

They came back almost as quick as they did before, but this time they came with contrition on their face, and in their postures; hunched shoulders and hands folded in one another, held low. The three miners stood on the other side of Erick’s dense air, and bowed.

One of the men said, “Since our attempt at hitten your shield ain’t what you wanted, is there a way to prove ourselves as worthy of your time?”

Erick called out, “I read your application while it was in your pocket. If there was something you needed to say that you were too afraid to write down, then you should have written that. But as for what I saw: I’m too busy and too rich to be interested in a mining operation. Good luck clearing out your mine.”

The woman shouted, “We’ll give you 50%— No! 65%!”

“Not. Interested,” Erick said, then he sipped his coffee.

The other miner man glanced around, nervous, and then went for the lie, saying, “We ain’t write it all down! We got secrets in that mine! Gold— Gold and— Uh. Magic books! Magic books are in that mine!”

Erick frowned.

Even the other two miners could tell that that the third had way overstepped. They looked at their friend like he was a village idiot.

Erick responded to the lie with an [Undertow Star] cast into the sky, Shaped to keep its power in the sky, and to touch down around his yurt. This targeting included the miners. White streamers of light pulled away from the miners and they started to freak out. They ran away from Erick’s power, escaping the Undertow after getting about eighty meters away.

The Drain did not reach Clan Pale Cow, or anyone else.

… Erick decided that he would leave the Star up and active until he was receiving visitors again.

For a little while longer, Erick simply enjoyed his coffee, and watched the sun rise all the way. Blue twilight turned into a cloudy day, with great big piles of white fluff crowding out the horizon in every direction. The scent of cows flavored the air, but it was not that disgusting of a scent. The cows were rather clean, after all. Erick found that the scent went well with the sounds of mooing.

For a brief while, everything seemed right with the world.

Eventually, Erick finished his coffee, took a look at the metal ingots, and began sketching out a wardlight diagram of a car. Or at least the frame.

Now how did a car work, exactly?

Erick had talked a big game with the elders, but he only knew the broadest strokes about all the moving parts inside a car. Most of his knowledge was filled in with obvious solutions, thanks to Intelligence.

After ten minutes, he had a working model of a differential, and a transmission, and suspensions, and all of the other, larger and more obvious parts of a car. He smiled, then he got to work.

Erick pulled apart metal with magic, Shaping it into frames and gears and axles. He ran into problems almost right away. It was the same problem he ran into when he made his gramophone, and when he cut diamonds, and when he made anything mechanical; mechanical designs required mechanical precision. A simple Shaping, no matter how well constrained, could not account for the precision needed so that gears actually turned with each other, instead of gradually tearing each other apart, or just not working at all how they should. Erick could certainly draw a perfect circle with one hand, thanks to Dexterity, but to replicate that feat across the whole of a car? Impossible.

So, first came the tools. Or rather, the first set of tools.

A crude lathe, made with stone for a weighty base, and steel for strength and flexibility. [Control Machine] worked well to iron out some of the problems of his crude machine, like getting the spinning parts to spin without flexing in odd ways. From there, [Metalshape], held against guides, helped to carve out better parts for the next iteration of tools.

The second lathe ran like a well-oiled machine, with a central yoke that spun without flexing and parts that were capable of machine precision. Erick had thrown together the first lathe, but this one would last for a while. He even Shaped a stone platform out of the grasslands for it, set away from his yurt. In fact… Erick went ahead and Shaped a few different platforms, for all of his immediate needs.

From there, Erick made straight axles and gears with properly segmented teeth. And then he put them all together.

A differential was what they called the collection of gears that was located, usually, in the rear axle of a car. This 6 part gear system, allowed the turning force of an engine to then turn a large gear that connected to two smaller gears, that were then connected to the left and right halves of the axle. This complicated structure allowed the engine to supply power to the wheels, while it also allowed those wheels to turn at different speeds, to allow a car to take corners without skidding.

Making the frame was easy enough, since precision wasn’t needed for that, for now. All he did was stretch metal out into a dune buggy-like configuration, leaving all of the innards fully exposed. Two latticework chairs went into the two available spaces for seating, which was located directly above the central axle. Erick created basic metal wheels out of spun steel, and then he attached them to a split rear axle. Those two rear axles then went into the differential, which was then connected to the central drive shaft.

And that was it! There were about a hundred other parts to make and shove together and experiment upon, but this was the basic differential setup that Elder Uriol was so fascinated with. It allowed wheels to take corners, without one wheel digging into the dirt, or lifting out of the dirt, like with what happened on solid axle setups.

Now… if it worked, Erick would be truly surprised.

Erick took his seat, and looked down, and back. Everything was exposed. The parts were not in oil, and they should be. Erick frowned. From this perspective, the gears looked a lot more wonky than they should…

Still! He tested it.

He held his breath, and manually turned the central drive shaft with his light. This, in turn… broke the gears of the differential. Ping! Snap! Crunch!

Crunch was never a good sound to hear when starting a car.

“Ah. Well then.” Erick realized something important. He mumbled to himself, “Because I made the gear teeth like normal gear teeth. They need to be beveled gears. Ah. And those ones need to be helical. Right…”

The second generation differential worked better than the first, but odd stresses broke the gears in different places, this time.

Erick went back to the drawing board.

[Metalshape] was the problem, here. It was a well known problem, actually. Shaping metals worked fine for enchanting, or for other low-stress needs, but when the metal was to be stressed, either in weapons or in armor, then you needed to know how to make metal both hard and tough, and that’s what Smiths did. This ‘Problem of [Metalshape]’ was what gave rise to the Class of Smiths, of all types. A Smith usually achieved their mastery of metal through secret formulas of metallurgy, and temperature control, and legacies passed down from master to apprentice, but Erick had none of that. All he had were youtube videos that he barely watched, years ago, and wikipedia pages that he skimmed only out of a bare interest in the subject.

But hey!

All of that free knowledge had helped him out lots, before! And it would help him out here, too.

Erick recognized that he’d need to do a lot of experimenting on his own, though. A lot of tempering, and diagram building, and metal smashing tests— Oh! And hardening, too. Tempering and hardening were different.

Tempering was the addition of heat and cooling to a metal in order to remove hardness and add toughness. Hardening was the exact opposite, where you used heat and then cooling in order to… create hardness, and remove toughness.

Okay. So. Erick realized that his knowledge was lacking, and probably mixed up, somehow. This might be more difficult than he thought it would be.

Erick sat back down in his captain’s chair and had a think. When he came out of that think, he knew one thing: He would need to experiment. For normal steel production, Erick expected he needed to heat his gears until they were cherry red, and then he needed to cool them in oil, or something. That was his starting point.

It was probably wrong! But everyone started somewhere.

Oh. He had a half-remembered thought about only heating the teeth of the gears? To create toughness? While leaving the center not-that-heated, in order to create hardness? Eh! Sure! Maybe?

Okay!

Erick had never done this before. And yet! He smiled. This might be fun. There was one more question, though: How to get the requisite heat in order to get metal up to temperature? [Heat Ward] wouldn’t cut it, for that was only useful for cooking, and Fire Magic actually burned metals, so you couldn’t just use [Fire Beam], or something, to make metals hotter. Erick knew that much about smithing on Veird, but not much more than that.

Oh! Induction heating! Would that work?

… How did that work?

… Induction heating worked by, for example, having a metal wire wrap around an empty space, and then an alternating electrical current was run through that wire, creating a powerful magnetic field inside the wrapped space. When a resistive metal is placed inside that wrapped space, the resistivity of that metal butted up against the electric field, and the friction of the electrons in that resistive metal caused the metal to heat to truly high degrees, depending on the strength of the electrical field and the resistivity of the metal.

… That seemed correct.

Erick already had an electricity spell, too.

Battery X, instant, medium range, 500 mana

Electricity flows. Lasts for 1 minute per spell level.

But [Battery X] was a direct current spell.

… He could invent power inverters? But if he invented power inverters, he would probably need to invent transformers, too, to decrease the power of [Battery X] to something smaller, and more manageable. [Battery X] was a darn powerful spell, after all. So how did a transformer work?

Well, those worked by having two wires coiling around two sides of a circle of electrically motive metal. Depending on the number of coils on the input versus the output, you could increase or decrease the voltage of the output. All three electrical systems needed to be insulated from each other—

So he’d need to invent electrical insulation, too?

But plastic needed oils, and there wasn’t a lot of that on Veird; not like there was on Earth.

Could he create oil from thin air, using Particle Magic?

Heh. Such a spell would be world changing back on Earth. Ya know. If the oil companies didn’t kill or bury whoever made such a magic. Honestly, Erick expected more of that sort of situation to happen to him, here on Veird— Meh. No more of that sort of thinking.

How to make plastic from air?

Hmmm…

Probably not going to do that.

At least he already had magnets sorted! He already knew [Magnetize]; Archmage Ryul, the Force Mage harpy Erick had met at Oceanside, had invented that spell.

Ryul lived in Nelboor, right? Why hadn’t Erick met him, yet? Where did he live?

Eh! Too much going on right now to worry about that. If he showed, he showed, and that he hadn’t already, likely meant he wouldn’t at all. To be fair, though, Erick hadn’t sought out the guy, either.

Anyway!

Magnets! And Electricity! And metal!

Erick felt torn in several directions at once.

He went where his mood took him.

- - - -

Jane woke up an hour before noon.

When she stepped outside, she paused, and tried to understand exactly what she was looking at. She got most of it easily enough. Her father had created multiple stone platforms all around the yurt, and atop some of those platforms, he had recreated bits of Earth in the form of car parts. Gears. Axles. Frames and wheels. But then she looked to the left, the rest of the platforms. One of them, which was truly puzzling, contained stone containers— Oh. Crucibles. Have to be. Except... They were not normal crucibles. Instead of air and fire spells and pushing fire, metal rods coiled around the crucibles, and all of the crucibles were broken. Some of them had melted into slag. So… Failures? All failures, then.

Her father was on yet another platform, further to the left, working at a stone table, upon a bunch of small metal bits. She walked over to him, and looked over what he was making. She didn’t understand any of it.

“Hey, Jane” Erick fiddled with some small wires while asking, “What do you remember about transistors and other fast-switching electrical currents? AC power?”

“Absolutely nothing at all.”

“Ah.” Erick’s Shaping spells went still. He took one long look at what he was working on, and said, “Well. Then…” He put down his bits of metal. “This was going too far, I think. I think I need to do something else.”

Jane only had the barest idea of what her father was doing. “Good luck, dad. I’m gonna go see what’s happening at the cheese yurt and bring back lunch. You need anything?”

“Nope; I’m good. Nirzir and Teressa brought back sandwiches earlier.” Erick waved her off, saying, “I think Nirzir is at the cooking yurt.”

Jane nodded, then walked off, passing layers of [Prismatic Ward] and then walking under an [Undertow Star]. The [Undertow Star] was new since she went to sleep. Had something happened? Or was her father just being more defensive?

Whatever her father was working on, he was at least doing it on high alert, and that made Jane kinda happy. She had wanted him to put a Star into the sky last night, but she feared asking him to do that would set off his paranoia.

Granted, he had reason to be paranoid.

Jane kinda missed when he was just her laid back father, though.

… Ha!

She almost laughed at herself. What an odd thing to want! Her father, back to being a laid-back pacifist? No way! Jane was glad for the changes she was seeing.

Well… Most of them.

Some of them.

This life certainly wasn’t great for her father. He wasn’t cut out for the blood and the killing. He was getting there, for sure, but… He was changing, too, and it was anyone’s guess what Erick would look like once the changes reached equilibrium.

- - - -

Erick stared at his failed transistors. The bits of metal and stone were little more than imitations of the real thing; There was absolutely no way that Erick was ever going to recreate this major, tiny bit of technology out here, in the middle of cow land—

Oh. Transistors were made out of silicon semi-conductors, with two types of silicon, either doped with phosphorus, to give one side extra electrons, to make them naturally negatively charged, or boron, which had a valence shell holes in its makeup, which made them naturally positively charged. These materials, when sandwiched in NPN and PNP type transistors, created electrically stable open circuits, until an electrical force was applied to the central area. When electrical force was applied to the central part of the transistor, the depletion layers vanished, and the circuit closed.

It was because of this physical arrangement of physical forces, that transistors could open or close their circuits very, very fast. Billions of times a second, even!

This was how computers worked!

Ah.

But.

Hmm.

Transistors were used for a variety of things, but for Erick’s purpose, he needed them in order to make his direct current [Battery] work as alternating current, so that he could use induction heating to precisely melt metals to make gears not break… under… loads.

Erick realized that he was trying to recreate way too many technologies, too fast. He didn’t actually need to do any of this, either. But...

There was a future problem that Erick was trying to solve, that wasn’t apparent when he first spoke of cars to the Elders of Ooloraptoor, and that problem was a future energy crisis. Yes; he realized this was thinking too far ahead, and there were so many problems right now that he was effectively just making more work for himself.

But.

When [Gate]s to other worlds opened up, there wouldn’t be any resources at all in those new places. There might not be any Script-assist, either, if Melemizargo got his way, and Erick expected the Dark God would get his way at least a little bit. Therefore, electricity, which could be stored and recharged through a simple application of [Battery X] (or more realistically, some other mechanical force), would be necessary in lands where magic might be different. Therefore, solving an electricity crisis before it became a crisis, and before market forces and other powerhouses got their hold on this technology, would be a good thing.

Of course, this was also not Erick’s problem to solve. But, if he could solve this problem before it became a problem, then wouldn’t that be nice? Or, phrasing it another way: Wouldn’t it be nice to not create a future problem for himself, or anyone else, by skipping the oil and burnable-fuel industrial revolution? Just go straight to electricity!

… This was obviously too much of a problem to solve here, in these grasslands, surrounded by cows and mobile houses and with none of the materials that he needed to have, in order to actually create any of these technologies. All he had was iron. He didn’t even know how to get silicon. But even trying to solve the transistor was trying to run a marathon while in a full body cast.

Eh! Whatever! It was still nice to know the distance to the new goalpost.

But anyway!

Back to metallurgy:

Erick already had the spell necessary to help him heat up metals, and it wasn’t an Elemental Fire spell, so it should work fine in this application. It was a spell that Maia of the mage trio had created and which Erick had gained through witnessing her magic.

Incandescent X, instant, medium range, 25 MP

Heat a small area to brilliance, dealing physical damage per second. Effect stacks. Lasts 10 minutes.

In exchange for that spell, Erick had created one for Maia.

Shimmer X, instant, long range, 250 MP

Tiny specks of incandescent heat fill a large space, dealing physical damage and possibly igniting flammable objects to deal even more physical damage. Lasts 10 minutes.

The smaller spell would fill out a meter-wide space with heat energy, rapidly turning stone to magma and passively setting fire to the surroundings. The larger spell did the same thing across an area the size of a house. Erick would not be using [Shimmer] to harden and temper steel, though. [Incandescent] would work just fine, once Erick made it into an aura.

Erick stepped away from his workbench, then walked over to stand atop the bare, grassy ground. With a flicker of intent, he exploded a meter-wide section of plains into burning debris. Hot dirt fell down in a five meter radius, with some of the more distant burned dirt landing much further than that, while a small cloud of black smoke rose into the air. What was left of the targeted area became a dip of melted and melting ground that sent even more black smoke into the air. Soon, the smoke vanished, as all burnable materials were consumed by the spell.

Erick was a bit surprised, but he also realized he shouldn’t have been.

[Incandescent] operated differently here, than when he cast it on the sands outside Spur. There was actual plant matter and moisture in the ground here, so that made sense. This was why it was imperative to test things! Erick hadn’t been thinking about this particular complication when he decided he needed to Aurify [Incandescent], but now he knew.

He turned off [Lodestar], and then he cast.

[Incandescent].

Aurify.

The world turned to flaming fire in every direction, melting the ground underneath into black glass and the air into a ripping tempest. And yet Erick was not harmed, for he was a being of light in the center of those flames. There were entirely too many flames, though. Barely a second had passed, and Erick was already setting fire to all of his surroundings. Even from ten meters away, under a bubble of [Prismatic Ward] that extended outside of all the rest, Erick’s fire was reaching the yurt and blackening the white wood, not to mention he had exploded the land for a good three meters in every direction and set fire out to fifteen meters away.

A blue box appeared, exactly as Erick expected it to.

Incandescent Aura, instant, close range, 1 mana per second + Variable

Heat your surroundings to brilliance. Effect can be modulated at will.

Erick pulled back the flames, controlling his aura into something smaller; lesser. A [Cleanse] erased the damage around him, turning burned brown grounds into thick air, leaving behind a suspiciously clean spot in the prairie. He would leave that damage for now, for he doubted that he was done doing damage to his surroundings for the day. Stepping upon the light, Erick moved away from the divot in the ground, controlling his new aura to the palm of his outstretched hand, forming the spell into a small, yet brilliant plume of white fire. As he moved back to the steel ingot area, he played with his new spell, flickering the flames higher, then smaller, then denser, then into stars, then a square, then a series of triangles, and finally, a collection of spheres.

With a grab of light, Erick picked up an iron ingot and began applying his new aura to the metal, while simultaneously protecting the rest of the area from the rush of heat with a dense application of hard light. Soon, the metal was cherry red, but it wasn’t getting much hotter than that.

So Erick funneled more mana into his new aura, strengthening the spell, rapidly turning red hot steel into white hot metal, then into a sudden liquid state. The liquid almost exploded from the rapid temperature change, but he felt this much through his light, and he kept the metal together. The metal relaxed into a bowl of light. With this much contact against his lightform, Erick had to shove more mana into [Greater Lightwalk], too, to keep himself together. He could partially feel the heat, himself. It was not a great sensation, but it was manageable. Erick retracted his heat aura, and soon, the metal calmed down, solidifying once again—

His thoughts about the particle makeup of transistors shook loose thoughts regarding the particle makeup of this steel. Was it steel? Or was it iron? What sort of carbon content was necessary to make iron into steel? A lot of carbon? Or very little?

Were these ‘steel ingots’ actually cast iron?

Erick smiled wide. He could actually find out the exact components of this steel. He had all the necessary spells to do so, from [Condense Carbon], to [Condense Iron], along with all the other various spells to see what sort of trace elements they threw into their metal.

So Erick did just that—

Ah. Wait. He needed a vacuum spell, didn’t he? Something that could create a space that allowed for no other particles to enter… Or perhaps he could just harden his light and expand it outward, manually creating a vacuum?

Erick tried for the easiest solution, first. He took his light and made a bubble in front of him. The bubble was only a handspan across, and that was more than enough. With a pulse of intent, he made the light solid, to push out all the air in the space.

He barely got a single inch of vacuum space in the center of the light bulge before his lightform collapsed back down. Hmm. Not too easy, making a vacuum! He tried again. Erick flexed his light outward, pushing against everything, stretching his lightform into a bubble of pure vacuum— The edge cracked and wind whistled into the interior of his light.

So that was a failure.

He set down the still-orange block of steel and tried a few more times to make a vacuum, stressing his lightform —without [Lodestar]— into producing a void, but he knew that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with this level of magic, alone. So he turned off his heat aura, and turned on his [Lodestar]. This time, Erick easily kept his sunform together, creating a vacuum a meter across without any trouble at all. Keeping it together required focus, but this much focus was easy enough to achieve. But he couldn’t directly work [Incandescent Aura], [Greater Lightwalk], and [Lodestar], all at the same time, by himself. Aurify only allowed him to have two auras active at any one time; not three.

There were many solutions here. He could split his focus through multiple Ophiel and do everything he wanted to do at the same time. He could just plain ignore fidelity in his material sciences; who cared about metal contents! Leave that up to the people who came next. But…

Erick could make a new magic to solve this problem.

Erick chose to make some new magic.

He expanded his mana sense into the recent past, as he sent off a hundred mana and a question into the manasphere.

Divine fire flickered through the sun-bright air, like golden flames barely visible in the light. Erick’s own voice came back to him, saying, ‘Go for it.’

Erick smiled and returned to himself. He stared out into the sky, then he focused on the world directly in front of him. This would be a small spell; something for precision work. Something that would allow the [Condense] line of Particle Spells to work well within its confines.

A limerick would do.

“I heard once tell of a room,

“That was, in effect, a tomb

“For all particles were cowed

“Though some were allowed

“But for most, it was perfect [Vacuum].”

The manasphere flexed.

A spell popped into existence; a simple, three meter wide sphere with a faint white sheen to the surface. The interior was empty, but the sphere soon began to fill with white glows, like fog appearing in the morning. Whatever was happening in the interior began to spread to the exterior, the fog churning like whirlpools. Suddenly, that fog swirled out of the edge of the space, shooting out of a dozen pores in the surface of the spell, looking and sounding like high pressure water from a hose. The spell whined, with a low whistle, like a teapot revving up with steam.

That sound soon lessened, as most of the interior of the spell was forcibly moved to the exterior.

Erick watched as the enchanted space emptied itself of air, the white fog inside thinning with each passing second. Eventually, there was the barest amount of white fog left inside the space. The magic’s edge remained thin, as if only to warn onlookers that something was there, but as those final dregs of white gasses left the spell, the entire sphere cleared to a simple ring of white.

It was still very much a sphere, but the only part of the spell that Erick could actually see was that thicker edge that seemed to form a ring in the direction he looked from.

A few blue boxes appeared. There were the normal ones that congratulated him for adding magic to the Script, and then there was the actual spell description. Erick cast a [Greater Treat Wounds] on himself while he read, though he didn’t actually feel that had damaged himself— Ah. No. There’s the nosebleed. And now it’s gone.

Particle Vacuum 1, instant, medium range, 100 mana

Create a medium area that strips out extraneous particles from its interior, and which continues to remove extraneous particles for the duration of the spell. Will not remove particles that are purposefully placed into the space, by you, or any other. Vacuums can cause physical damage. Lasts 1 minute.

Erick smiled. [Particle Vacuum] was just about perfect!

Perhaps he could add a [Cleanse] effect to this spell, to clear out the last bits of contaminants, to make a truly [Perfect Vacuum]... But that would be playing around with the actual functionality of [Cleanse], and there was no need to be that dangerous in this experiment. Whatever fidelity of vacuum was provided by [Particle Vacuum] was probably good enough for Erick, for now.

But that was probably all of the metallurgy that Erick was going to get done, today.

People had been showing up at the edge of Erick’s protected property for the last hour. As it was nearly noon, it was almost time to start talking to all of them, even though most of them looked perfectly happy to watch his experiments of metals and fire and to witness the creation of new magic.

Erick grabbed some chairs from the yurt, floating them behind him as he walked toward the edge of his temporary property. His destination was a stone platform beyond the edge of his [Undertow Star] and his [Prismatic Ward], where he had planted his mailbox. An Ophiel perched above that mailbox, ensuring that people could grab applications if they wanted, but otherwise he chased them off of the area. The archmage was not ‘in’, yet.

But now, as Erick moved toward that area —and Poi rushed out of the yurt to follow Erick to the worksite— only about a third of the petitioners quickly lined up; those people were used to the bureaucracy of the Highlands, for sure. It showed in their well made robes and polite demeanor. The other two thirds formed loose groups here and there, and some of them were obviously from the Highlands, too, but they did not feel like falling into line. From what Erick was seeing, only two people of the gathered 47 had come on their own, without a group.

About half of the people out there were human, incani, or demi. The rest were an eclectic mix of the various races of Veird. There was a duo of snake shifters, with scaled masks and the smallest, faintest scales upon their bodies; only the most blind of people would mistake them for dragonkin. There was even a trio of harpies with bright red feathers, and very little in the way of clothes; they stood together, off to the side.

Five goblins had come together, and those tiny green people stayed well away from absolutely everyone. Their eyes studied every possible threat around them while they kept their hands on their sheathed swords, though calling those tiny daggers ‘swords’ was only true because of the height of the wielders. Apart from their rather unique stature, their other most notable features were that they were all dressed in black iron breastplates, with two of them wearing fullplate made of the same black iron. And it was iron, too; it was not conjured Force. Kinda unique to see that much metal on display.

There were even some pixies. Those decimeter tall people were a bit of a surprise. Messalina, the Life Binder, had created that race a few hundred years ago. Were these people an envoy from the Headmaster’s old flame, who was now his enemy? Or were they independent? From what Erick had heard, most of the pixies were independent, but rumors said that if you needed the Life Binder’s services, all you had to do was ask enough pixies, and you would eventually find the Life Binder. Wonder what they wanted?

People watched as Erick stepped onto his stone platform. It was only five meters square, but it was more than large enough for small meetings, especially since he wasn’t going to meet with whole groups, if he could help it.

Erick set down his chairs and turned to his petitioners. He projected his voice, “Many of you were here yesterday, though some of you are new to me. I will attempt to get through those who were here first, yesterday, and then the rest of you afterward. But before that happens, I am going to attempt to decrease my workload. To that end, if you have a quick question, or if you want something you don’t mind other people seeing, please hold up your paperwork now, toward me. I will read them all quickly, and then solve whatever problems I choose to solve, or I will send you on your way. Monster kill requests fall under this category, unless they’re deep in the Underworld or exceedingly far away. And by ‘far away’, I mean ‘outside of Nelboor’s surface’.”

A few people rapidly held up their paperwork, while a few others spoke quietly amongst themselves. Eventually, half of the petitioners raised their paperwork, while the others kept theirs hidden. Their requests either did not fall under the constraints Erick had put out there, which meant their kill requests were for monsters outside of Nelboor, or else what they wanted was more complicated than ‘kill this monster’.

Ophiels flitted through the air, around the scattered groups.

Erick started reading.

Almost everyone who raised their paperwork needed a monster killed. Erick decided that he needed to add another few boxes to his application; primarily a check box for ‘Monster: Y / N’ and then a space for an approximate location and description of the monster. A few had included proper directions and descriptions, though, which was nice to see.

The goblins started yelling at each other. A fight rapidly ended before it could begin when a female goblin hit the lead male goblin on the head, grabbed the application out of his hands, and held it upward. The bonked goblin held his bumped head and frowned over his wounded pride. One of the armored goblins put a comforting hand on the lead male goblin’s shoulder, which seemed to soothe the guy’s pride.

Erick mostly ignored the commotion, and called out, “Okay. Looks like almost all of you have monster kill requests. Except for you three.” His Ophiel indicated the three groups. “I will answer your questions first: All are ‘no’.” The three groups frowned, but accepted their answers. Erick spoke to the rest of the people, “All of the rest of your requests look doable except for the variant toxic hydras in Nergal. That might be a bit too far to complete this very moment. You’ll have to wait around until I’m done with everyone else.” He asked the pixies, “Is your homeland in danger right this second?”

As all eyes turned toward the pixies the central pixie floated forward, his dragonfly wings barely beating. In a voice that sounded like it came from a very large man, the pixie succinctly explained, “The Decay pools caused by the toxic hydras threaten a major population center. For the last week, we have sent out representatives to every archmage and power that we know of in an attempt to kill the beasts, and yet all those who have tried, have failed. We have three days to kill the beasts before the protective measures we have been able to take will be overwhelmed. At that point, we will need to evacuate thousands and thousands of people, and we already have no other easy place to go.”

Erick said, “Okay. Thank you for that quick explanation. I will deal with that later today since your problem might be the furthest one of all the rest. You may come back when I am finished with everyone else, or you may wait around.”

“We will make ourselves unobtrusive and return at the end of the day.”

The pixie and his two people dipped in the air. And then they vanished from sight, and most senses. They couldn’t fool Erick’s [True Sight] and his mana sense, though. While a few people stared at the space where the pixies vanished, or rapidly looked around, trying to see where they had gone, Erick ignored the pixies as they flitted off toward Ooloraptoor.

Erick said to the goblins, “Your request is a strange one, but I can do it. The only problem is that you’re in the near Underworld. How deep, and where, exactly?”

As some of the goblins yelped with joy, the female goblin squeaked out, “Homeland be a great big hole just north of the South Western Tribulation Split! It may be Underworld, but it’s exposed to the sky, it is!”

The leader goblin spoke up, “Almost directly southwest, 13 [Teleport]s.” He glared at the woman briefly before he snatched the paperwork out of her waving hand. He set the paperwork backwards, onto a conjured bit of [Force Platform], and began writing as he said, “We can add a map.”

A map was a good idea, and Erick vowed to add that to the next generation of his applications, too, but the few directions the goblins had given had been enough. Erick found their ‘Homeland.’

Ophiels stretched their connections from the grasslands, to the South Central Tribulations, across a bit of ocean, and then to another landmass further beyond. Beyond even more rolling hills and forests and expansive land, the western branch of the Tribulations rose into the sky, looking much like all the rest of the Tribulations; mountains much bigger than any natural process could have ever created.

A bit of rapid searching beyond that had brought Erick’s sight to a giant wound in the world that went three times as deep as the mountains were tall. This place was the Near Underworld, and this particular rent in the world was filled with towers and buildings and walls and farms and lots, and lots, of goblins.

Erick said, “A map is good. In fact: everyone with a monster kill request, please add a general map and a description or lightsculpture of the monster you wish eliminated. As for you five, I will have to talk to you directly, and that will come after the other monster kill requests. Please make yourself comfortable, or come back later.”

The five goblins each heard and understood Erick’s words in their own ways. They kept their eyes out on everyone else nearby, but they backed down from high alert. Erick got the distinct impression that they were a persecuted people, and that his words had put them at ease. The girl goblin nodded rapidly, then began creating a wardlight sculpture of the monster they wanted moved; not killed. Their request was an odd request, for sure. Erick almost dismissed it out of hand, but he would at least hear them out.

With that settled, Erick began organizing the rest of the people according to what they had written on their paperwork.

Three groups wanted tangled hydras killed before those monsters threatened their coastal cities, while the rest of the kill requests were similarly dangerous monsters which most people couldn’t handle on their own. There was even one instance of ‘mystery monsters’ that had been disappearing people out of the middle of a city, located on the other side of the South Central Tribulations, in a land far north of where Terror Peaks had been. Those mystery monsters turned out to be a small group of moon reachers that had made their home in the nearby forest. When those petitioners heard mention of ‘moon reachers’, they freaked, but Erick had already killed all of the moon reachers in a thousand kilometers, according to his [Cascade Imaging]. He had actually managed to kill more groups of moon reachers than the few who had preyed upon that clan, too; about 120 in total.

Those kill requests didn’t take much time at all. In a little over 45 minutes, Erick had ended existential threats to thousands and thousands of people, or enabled refugee populations to return to their homes. It didn’t even take a full hour!

Erick felt a wave of disgust for all monsters, and also that most people would never be able to fight against many of the ones he so easily dispatched. A few of the monsters, though, like the moon reachers, should have been killable by the defenses of an average town. Erick expected that those people had something wrong with them, though; some reason to bring this problem to him. Like, sure, he had killed hundreds of thousands of moon reachers, but those people didn’t even know that they had a moon reacher problem, and that was a bigger problem than the moon reachers themselves.

Most of the petitioners didn’t pick up on his disgust, though.

Those with solved problems moved on, cutting through 29 of the original 47 people who had been there when Erick started doing this. But even though Erick had gotten through half of the crowd, the actual number of petitioners had not decreased, at all. Now there were 75 people waiting for him, though as for the number of groups, there were only 31.

He elected to speak to the goblins, now.

- - - -

Erick sat back in his chair, briefly holding and reading the goblins’ application again. He set the paper aside and said, “So you want a monster moved. Not killed. Do I have that right?”

The lead goblin, a man by the name of Ykk, sat in the chair opposite Erick, while his people stood on the grasses on Ykk’s side of the platform. All five of them nodded at Erick’s words. Ykk said, “Yes, sir.”

Erick said, “This is odd, you understand. This deviation from the norm makes me think there is something untoward happening. I don’t wish to be involved in politics, and I certainly cannot abide by accidentally loosing some evil upon some unsuspecting area.” Erick said, “Tell me what is going on, here.”

Ykk, and his people, all stilled, their expressions going unreable. They were already hard to read, but now it was practically impossible. They even seemed to consciously control the beating of their hearts, though Erick might have been wrong about that.

Ykk began, “What we are asking is not for a Dangerous Game, but for the solving of a problem caused by negligence among the Herders.” Ykk reached down into the neck of his black breastplate and retrieved a white metal disk, attached to a thin, white chain. “I have authority invested in me by the White Council —The ruling body of Homeland— to solve this problem as quick as I can, before it becomes a true problem and we lose the beast. None of us actually wish for the monster’s death. This is unusual, yes, but only because iron beasts are just as unusual.”

Erick frowned a little. The goblin was completely unreadable. Perhaps goblin physiology was too far away from what Erick was used to, for the long nose and the pointed chin, and the black eyes, made it very hard to understand the micro expressions he was seeing.

Erick said, “I’m going to ask my guard, who is a Mind Mage, to lie detect for me. Do you consent?”

Ykk’s expression did not change at all, as he glanced to Poi, standing behind Erick. Ykk looked to Erick. “I consent.”

Poi nodded.

Erick asked, “Do you knowingly intend to cause harm or trouble for others with the moving of this iron beast that you have asked me to move?”

“No, sir.”

Poi nodded; no lies.

Erick held up the lightsculpture that the female goblin had made, asking, “Tell me about this monster, and why it needs to be moved, and not killed.”

The lightward showed a lobster-like beast, but with a dark iron shell and several pedipalp-like collections of tendrils instead of forward claws. For size comparison, a goblin stood next to the iron beast. The goblin was the size of the iron beast’s toe claws. Erick guessed that the live beast was the size of a two-story house. Possibly more.

Ykk said, “The iron beast in question was stolen from the hatchery two years ago by a child who thought to raise his family to power with the iron harvesting abilities of the beast. The child, against all odds, managed to do three unlikely things: hatch the beast, become its Beastmaster, and have the juvenile iron beast survive the transition to adult, when the small core turns into a grand core. All three things are highly unlikely, with such an event occurring approximately once every seven years. Most of the iron beasts we have under the White Council’s control are a hundred years old, and we’re always having some Beastmasters trying to raise a new Iron Beast.

“And so, we come to the problems of this boy getting his wish.

“Iron beasts are terribly temperamental. Once they turn into monsters, they never willingly leave their birth tunnels. This boy hatched his beast inside a mine of his own creation, far outside of established, patrolled, protected areas.

“The boy has gained his wish, and his family has become the caretakers of the iron beast, harvesting its ever-increasingly-large cast off shells for profit. This achievement has even brought the boy a true noble name of Tryker Ironknife, along with accolades and wealth of such an elevation. The White Council has accepted this elevation, for many of them got where they were through the same sorts of means.

“But the boy fucked up, or some uncle or sister did; we don’t know, and we don’t care. We only care about the possible loss of a highly productive iron beast. There is a reason we have well protected and patrolled iron beast areas.

“Iron beasts don’t move as long as their tunnels contain iron, and they’re able to [Grow] it out of the nearest hundred kilometers, but just last week some ballooning spiders clipped through the beast’s tunnels, and the beast is beset on all sides by hungry spiders. This is the problem. The spiders can’t get through the beast’s hide, for the beast curled up to protect itself, but at the same time, the spiders won’t move on from easy prey; all they gotta do is outlast the iron beast’s fat reserves. In five more days, it’s gonna get hungry, and it’s gonna have to fight, and it’s gonna die, because iron beasts are not that strong, and since the spiders opened up the beast’s tunnels, all manner of monsters have poured inside. This is the larger problem.

“It could be that some other monster will come inside the tunnels, hunting after the spiders, and they’ll find the iron beast just sitting there like a delicious, weakened meal. It’s happened before, and in much more secure locations than where the beast is now.

“So what we want from you, if you could, is to move the beast twelve hundred kilometers through the air or however you want to do it, to a new set of tunnels that we already got established closer to Homeland.” Ykk sat back in his chair, saying, “And that’s the spiel. Will you help us out?”

All of that was rather interesting, and especially the part how the iron beast could [Grow] iron out of the ground? How did it do that? Did it have some sort of mutualistic relationship with an iron fungus, or something? Whatever the case—

Erick asked Poi, “Any lies?”

Poi said, “No overly large ones. The part about ‘the monster will die in five days’ would show up as pink on a standard red-pink-green truthstone.”

Ykk seemed to solidify a little, though some part of Erick guessed that the small man’s true reaction was deflation. It was, as Erick was finding out in new ways every few seconds, kinda hard to read goblins.

Erick said to Ykk, “I already found it hard to believe that your people couldn’t protect one of these iron beasts. Tell me: why the minor lie?”

Ykk stared disbelieving for a moment, then he seemed to realize something. He said, “We’re not all archmages, sir. People die when they step outside of the walls of the cities of the Underworld. This iron beast is in very uncharted territory.”

Erick frowned a little, then asked, “Have you contacted the Wayfarer’s Guild? They should be able to get someone with [Teleport Other] or [Teleport Monster] out to the beast. Such a theoretical person should also be able to use [Conjure Force Elemental] to get that spell out to the beast; there shouldn’t be a need to approach the monster at all.”

Ykk scowled a little, his emotions seeming more human in the moment, as he said, “We have a Wayfarer’s Guild in the city… Truthfully, sir, all the normal methods we would have used are denied to us. The boy who controls the beast— Tryker Ironknife has upset many of the wrong people in his rise to power. No one wants to work with him, and so the White Council has been goaded into action so that we don’t lose an iron beast to the whims of the Darkness.”

Erick glanced to Poi.

Poi nodded; no lies here.

Erick decided. “I’m going to move this beast for you, and then I wash my hands of this politicking.”

Ykk brightened—

Erick suddenly realized that while he could understand Ykk’s expressions more, it was not because the goblin was suddenly understandable; it was because Ykk was mirroring him. The goblin was purposefully tailoring his reactions toward Erick, in order to relate, communicate, and put Erick at ease. Come to think of it, Shade Hollowsaur had goblins on his plateau inside Ar’Kendrithyst’s Jungle. They were the Shade’s main workforce; they took care of the cows.

There was something there in this mirroring; something deep.

Ykk seemed to realize that something possibly bad was happening inside Erick’s mind; possibly because the little green man was reading Erick’s expressions better than Erick was reading Ykk’s, and Ykk was automatically compensating for what he was seeing. Ykk had been on the verge of saying something, but he stopped.

Erick just stared.

The other goblins, who had been standing off to the side of the platform, watching this whole time, realized something was going wrong, too, at almost the exact moment that Erick and Ykk felt an oddity stretch between them.

Erick asked, “So what’s all this, then?”

A long moment passed.

Ykk softly said, “I request a Privacy, now. You, me, and your man.”

Erick Shaped his [Sealed Privacy Ward] to the platform. To them, nothing changed, but everyone else saw Erick and Ykk and Poi vanish from sight. Their chairs were still there, but they were gone. Mostly. If someone looked at Erick’s feet, they would see bits of him sticking outside of the Privacy. Perhaps, more importantly, though, Ykk was completely cut off from the other goblins.

Erick waited.

Ykk said, “I apologize for attempting to Mirror you. I need the beast moved, and I knew I needed to do everything possible to ensure that this meeting turned out well. I can only apologize that my skill was not up to the pressures of the moment. This is a black mark for me.”

So he apologized for being caught in a manipulation tactic; not for actually trying to manipulate Erick.

Interesting.

Erick asked, “Is that a skill you can purchase from the Open Script? What is it, exactly?” Erick had another guess, and as soon as the words left his lips, he knew he was correct, “Something to do with goblins, in particular?”

Ykk narrowed his eyes, possibly wondering if he was in actual danger. It was hard to know, for it seemed goblins were capable of completely hiding what they were actually thinking and feeling, using a mask of mirroring.

Erick explained, “I don’t actually know anything about goblins.” In a bit of his own ‘mirroring’, Erick said, “I can only apologize that I don’t know anything about your people.”

“… It’s a thing all goblins can do; yes.” Ykk said, “It’s impolite to Mirror others to get what you want, but people do it all the time. When we get caught we have failed… the Dangerous Game.”

“And yet, you told me that you wouldn’t drag me into this ‘Dangerous Game’, which I can only assume has something to do with subservience and subterfuge and making the people in power do what you want them to do.”

Ykk dropped his head to his hands, mumbling, “Oh gods. They’re going to demote me down to sewer scrubber.”

“I doubt that will happen.” Erick said, “You got what you came here for.”

Ykk flinched, then he rose, eyeing Erick with his dark gaze. “Uh?”

“I have just now [Teleport Other]d the iron beast out of its lair, and into the one your people set up. The giant lobster is already prowling around its new lands.” When Ykk didn’t understand Erick, Erick explained, “I was investigating Homeland while I cleared out the kill requests from the other petitioners, and all of what you said was more or less what I saw on the ground. Finding Tryker’s iron beast took a bit of doing, but that was easy enough. While I was having a conversation with you, I was also talking with Tyker. Your stories lined up, and now, the boy is overjoyed that his beast is saved. You will likely get some of that credit.” Erick shrugged, saying, “I don’t know much about goblins, but I can tell there’s something odd going on here since Tryker tried to Mirror me, too. But that’s fine.” Erick asked, “I assume that every goblin tries to Mirror everyone larger than themselves?”

Ykk was having a moment, and then he realized that he was still sitting in front of an archmage. He rapidly said, “Yes. It’s instinctive. That instinct is near impossible to overcome when interacting with the strong, and you are… very strong. I apologize for my ineptitude.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Erick asked, “The problem of the iron beast is solved. Good luck with whatever comes next. I’ve got about thirty one more life threatening issues to deal with before the day is over, so I’m going to have to ask you to quickly move on.”

Ykk sat up straight, saying, “Of course! Apologies, Master Flat— Archmage Flatt.”

Erick froze. ‘Master’?

Ykk froze, too.

And then Ykk scurried away, out of the Privacy, to his people. The woman with them rapidly asked questions and Ykk hushed them all, talking about how it was time to go, and that the problem was solved; Erick had moved the iron beast. As four of the five goblins smiled wide, revealing sharp teeth, Ykk glared, and they all stopped smiling.

The woman extended power across her entire group, and in a translucent white flash, the goblins vacated the field.

Erick was still under the Privacy. He turned to Poi, asking, “So is that Mirroring a racial thing imbued into them by the Shades? I suppose I should ask first: Did the Shades make the goblins?”

“All we truly know is that the goblins came out of the tunnels of Continental Nergal’s Underworld in the year 90, Post Sundering, and that no Shade has ever claimed their creation.” Poi said, “The most prominent theory is that the Old Demons attempted to create a second slave race with orcols as the starter, because the incani were starting to become rather rebellious. Whatever happened, goblins have the unique ability to Mirror others, in order to make themselves exactly what the viewer wants them to be, sometimes even to the goblin’s detriment. Goblins can also go into minor Rages, but that usually only happens when they accidentally gain the subClass of Slave… Which sometimes occurs when they are around powerful people and the powerful people don’t realize what’s happening.”

Erick got the distinct impression that whatever was going on there was much more complicated than Poi had explained.

“It is,” Poi said.

Erick sighed, saying, “Some things just make me uncomfortable, and I think I have found a new one, today.”

“Most people feel the same way.” Poi said, “That was why the goblins were on edge when they were around everyone else.”

Erick stood up, saying, “Well. Whatever. Not my problem. Let’s move on to the next group. Got any suggestions for speed?”

Poi frowned a little, then said, “Nope.”

“Bah! Fine.” Erick dismissed the bubble, reappearing to the gathered crowds. “Okay! One problem solved. Thirty one—” Another group appeared atop the white stone that Erick had set out to act as a Teleport Square. He amended his words, “Thirty two more groups.”

Erick got to work.

He dismissed three of the groups right away. No, he would not be giving an account for your ‘a history of the chelation wars’ book right now, thank you! No, he would not ‘swear fealty to your clan and receive riches beyond imagining’, go away now! No, he would not marry your daughter, not gonna happen!

- - - -

On average, in order to solve a problem that actually warranted Erick’s intervention, there was fifteen to twenty minutes of listening, followed by five to ten minutes of interrogation, followed by how ever long it took to actually solve the problem. To make it all go a bit faster, Erick began conducting his own investigations while the people were still explaining what they needed, so when he got to the interrogation part, he could usually just solve the problem right there and then, but only after knowing it if needed to be solved, of course. In all the cases brought to him, most people had no way to solve them, but Erick was not ‘most people’.

He located the kidnapped scions of a clan, and he brought them home.

He ended monster hordes before they could hit settlements.

He closed vast cracks in the surface of Veird, where monsters spewed out from the Underworld.

He helped to end face stealer problems four different times. Those incidents took a bit more time, and the inclusion of other people, like Sin Seekers and guards and such, for Erick was not about to enact that sort of justice on his own. In three of those four incidents, the petitioners had enough connections to enable the swift allocation of Sin Seekers to the verification, but on the fourth one, the petitioners were just a small clan that was extremely worried by the news they were hearing, coming out of the grasslands.

That small clan was a mountain dwelling society that existed in the deep foothills to the east of grass traveler land, almost inside the Tribulations themselves. There were only a hundred people there, and Erick was able to call upon Vania and the other Sin Seekers of Ooloraptoor to help with that search.

The only ‘sins’ that the Sin Seekers uncovered were of the normal sort. There were no face stealers there, which was a blessing. Every other place Erick investigated contained face stealers. For this clan, though, they were just rightly worried, and they were about to tear themselves apart through their paranoia. There was already a lot of blood on those streets. Luckily, no one had been killed.

Erick brought Vania and the other Sin Seekers back to Ooloraptoor and thanked them for their assistance. They told him that they were just glad to help, though Erick got the distinct impression that he was asking a lot of them; they had duties of their own, after all.

Maybe Erick needed to find some Sin Seekers of his own.

And so, the day came to a near close, as the sun set and the sky turned orange and purple. Erick had gotten through almost every single group that had been there at noon, waiting for him, but 29 extra groups now waited in the wings, hoping that he could keep going for a little while longer.

“I’m almost done for the day, except for one group.” Some people groaned, some yelled, speaking out that their problems could not wait another day, but Erick simply spoke over their outbursts, “All of the rest of you can return tomorrow afternoon. Or! You could take care of your problem yourself. I’m all for helping you, but you should know that I am a last resort. The Star’s Draining field is expanding when I’m done here, so don’t expect to camp out next to my yurt! And you five groups!” Erick gestured with his light, pointing out the new offenders. “According to your applications, I cannot help you. Return if what you wrote was a lie to hide the truth of your problem, or else don’t return, because I’ll just deny you tomorrow.”

Four of the five groups scowled; the fifth went quiet, and gave a small nod.

Erick moved on.

A lot of the gathered groups moved on, too. Erick casually memorized many of the monster problems that he had spied on scattered applications; he’d kill those monsters on his own, later tonight, or something.

The pixies floated nearby. They had waited patiently for their turn.

Erick turned to the pixies, gesturing for them to come forward. As they reached him, Erick spoke in a normal volume, “I’m going to need to know some locations, and I heard you are rather secretive about that.” Erick sat back down in his own chair. “Do you wish for a Privacy, Wellowbye?”

The male pixie, Wellowbye, floated forward, to alight upon the back of the petitioner’s chair. In that position he reminded Erick of a tiny man standing atop a very tall building. His two companion pixies floated beyond the chair. Wellowbye said, “A Privacy would be welcome, Archmage. Thank you.”

Erick cast the Privacy, then he conjured a map of Veird between the two of them, so that Nelboor and Nergal laid between him and Wellowbye. Erick asked, “So where is your place, exactly? Or rather, where are the variant toxic hydras?”

Wellowbye stepped onto the map like it was a solid surface, landing on a bit of Nergal that was closest to Quintlan. “Here are the beasts.”

Of course, he had to pick the part of Nergal that was furthest away. Erick frowned, saying, “That’s halfway around the world.” For a brief moment, Erick lamented. Then he banished that emotion, and said, “Okay. I can do that. Probably gonna take an hour of lightstepping, though.”

With professional mien, Wellowbye said, “We wouldn’t wish to burden you overmuch with travel concerns, and so, we wish to reveal to you a strategic asset.” He gestured backward, to the side, where one of his companions floated. “Oliolo is a Spatial Mage, capable of [Gate].”

Erick perked up. “Oh! That makes this a whole lot easier. I can cast through the [Gate]!”

Yet another reason to get [Gate] as soon a possible—

A deep thought struck Erick, combining several facts at once. Like turning a masterfully cut diamond in his hand and suddenly seeing the fire within, he saw the Worldly Path in a sudden, new light.

[Gate], when purchased through the Script, cost 10 points, and you could never learn the spell yourself.

Adding to that, once you got through the first step of the Worldly Path, you lost the ability to ever purchase [Gate] through the Quest. This was where Erick was at right now. He had gone too far down his own Path to ever make use of the [Gate] laid down by the Script. And it was a [Gate] ‘laid down by the Script’ wasn’t it? Perhaps, spending those 10 points—

As far as Erick knew, and could postulate, points were pieces of something (probably something to do with souls and Script magnifications) that could be used to reinforce oneself through the allocation of points into Stats, and also to gain new Basic Tier spells or Skills. None of those ‘purchase’ applications granted a person the full Spell or Skill. A new Basic Tier purchase always started off at level 1. A level 1 whatever then had to be ‘grown’ to fullness, to level 10, through use.

What was happening there, was that the basic option was being solidified into the soul. That’s what it meant to grow a spell to level 10. And once a spell was at level 10, it could be used in spell combinations, because at that point, the spell was ‘fully yours’, or something.

Points, once a person gained them, though, were definitely part of the soul. Spent points became solid parts of the soul, while unallocated Points were nebulous parts of the soul that could be transformed into any Script-allowed options.

Points could also be spent on non-allowed options, through Wizardry, like with Melemizargo’s New Stats. In that particular case, those New Stats became a part of a person’s visible Status. That the New Stats existed at all on the Status was just the Script’s way of codifying what was happening to the user, though, right? … Maybe.

Maybe.

Also maybe: It was entirely possible that there were invisible parts of the Status, as well.

And so, to bring that idea back to [Gate], and the Worldly Path, and Erick’s idea that [Gate] was actually a nebulous ‘summoned being’, like a Twisted Vision, which allowed people to ‘step in’ to one portal and then ‘step out’ into another part of the world…

When a person took their first step on the Worldly Path, and they gained the Quest with the option to pump 10 points and just get [Gate]…

Was spending those 10 points, in effect, ‘hooking into’ the [Gate] network/being that existed in the Script? The [Gate]-being that the gods used? Was spending those 10 points, perhaps, shoving one's soul at the locked entrance to the godly ‘Gate Network’, and thus creating a key out of oneself, in order to use that godly ‘Gate Network’? In order to use the Path laid down by the creators of the Script?

Erick felt he could be wrong about that.

But...

Such an occurrence would explain why Tenebrae was never able to understand the [Gate] of the Twisted Vision, or the [Gate] that various people gained by spending 10 points on the Quest. If the true goal of the Path was for a person to create their own ‘[Summon Gate Creator]’, then of course Tenebrae would never be able to tap into the [Gate]s already out there. Tenebrae wasn’t the creator of those two known ‘Gate Networks’, and the creators of those [Gate]s would never allow someone to usurp their power… Or, the ‘Gate Monster’ actively chose not to interact with Tenebrae’s attempts at connection? Or maybe the Gate Monster couldn’t interact with Tenebrae’s attempted connections.

Oh.

So that was interesting.

Erick felt right about it, too.

Wellowbye went, “Sir?”

Erick turned his attention back to the pixie standing in front of him and ignored his own social blunder. He asked, “What sort of variant? Could it be that these toxic hydras are actually people from Messalina’s Village?”

Wellowbye froze a little, but rapidly thawed to professional stoicism. His compatriots shared his sudden solidness. Wellowbye said, “I swear upon the Relevant Entities that if these variant toxic hydras are members of the— The Village… Then I do not know of it, and they certainly aren’t acting how true Villagers would act. As far as we know, these monsters are monsters, through and through, with no regard for life of any kind save their own.” He turned to Poi, asking, “Please tell the Archmage if I am lying, or hiding relevant information.”

Poi said, “Ambassador Wellowbye believes the variant toxic hydras are truly monsters, of the classical kind. He wants them dead, for their Extreme Light threatens many pixie cities.”

Wellowbye stood a bit taller, his wings sweeping out behind him like he was a soldier at attention. The effect was diminished by his decimeter height.

“Good to hear.” Erick told the pixie, “Tell me about the toxic hydras.”

Wellowbye paused as he stared a little, as though he was assessing if Erick’s turnaround was genuine, or not. Soon enough, he decided that overthinking was as disastrous as not answering, so he might as well let the chips fall where they may. He said, “We do not know their true names, but we know that all three of them share the same sort of traits, of Elemental Illusion, Elemental Star, and Elemental Extreme Light.” Wellowbye added, “We think there are three of them, but it could very well be a single beast, though each hydra is different enough from the other that they might be three separate monsters. The only reason we think they are Illusion hydras is because they can instantly heal any damage done to them, like they were never damaged at all, and they can move and appear wherever they want inside their pools of Extreme Light.

“It is possible that they are not Illusion-based, but at this point, that is highly unlikely.

“Physically, they are the same as any other fully grown toxic hydra. Each of them are roughly 250 meters from their main head to the tip of their tails, weighing in at around 16,000 tons each. Where they vary is in the number of heads, coming in at four, five, and seven heads. And they moved into the neighborhood two weeks ago. We’ve already lost many outer settlements to the hydra’s poison, and we are desperate to kill them.”

Huh.

For a lot of reasons, it seemed that there was Worldly Path fuckery going on with this request, for sure.

But to be sure, Erick asked, “Are they [Teleport]ing through their pools? Or are they just [Water Body]ing? Or [Lightwalk]ing?” Erick added, “[Illusionwalk]ing.” He glanced to Oliolo, asking, “Or is it actual Spatial Magic?”

Wellowbye turned to his compatriot.

Oliolo floated forward. She was a professional-looking pixie in a pink pantsuit. “They are not fully submerging, as one would need to do with [Water Body]. They are not using any Space Magic that I know of. If anything, they are using a form of [Illusionwalk], which is why we believe that they are Elemental Illusion hydras.”

Erick nodded, then asked, “How long can you keep open a [Gate]? I plan on casting through it to reach the battlefield from here.”

“I can keep open a pixie-sized [Gate] for hours.” Oliolo said, “A human-sized [Gate] would only last ten minutes.”

“Let us get to work.” Erick had Ophiel lift off of his shoulder and shrink down to the size of a hummingbird. “Ophiel will take you a good dozen kilometers away from here and then you will open the [Gate] to within a hundred kilometers of the target. Further away is fine, for I can find them myself.”

Oliolo bowed. “It will be as you command.”

- - - -

Ophiel passed through an opening in the world, passing from twilight night, to early morning.

Far below, kilometers away, the untamed toxic jungles of Nergal stretched out in every direction like a moldy green carpet of varying colors. A strong breeze blew across the world. Ophiel reflexively turned his sunform into edges, to hear the wind whistle across his light, and in preparation for a possible ambush.

Since no ambush came, another three Ophiel joined the first on the other side of the [Gate].

Briefly, the four of them danced in the new air, listening to the sound of the wind and reveling in the newness of the land. And then Erick took control, and the three of them stepped through the light, to float a good twenty kilometers north of the [Gate] that brought them here. Their connection to Erick remained strong, with the Ophiel near the [Gate] holding onto the thread connecting them to their creator.

A cascading light went up into the new sky, and soon, a map appeared.

A minute later, the hydras were revealed, but oddly; three fuzzy blue dots about fifty kilometers that way… and then other fuzzy blue dots appeared here and there. (Probably a result of the radiation, Erick thought.) First four more blue dots, and then another two, scattered here and there in other parts of the jungle. More ‘Illusion Star Toxic Hydras’?

While Wellowbye and his pixies freaked out a bit back at Ooloraptoor, and Erick dealt with that issue, one of Ophiel took off, racing to the original targets. The others went in other directions. Quick checks revealed normal toxic hydras at every site except for the expected site. The pixies calmed.

From a good five kilometers in the sky, Ophiel saw the beasts, their lair, and the problems that they had created for the pixies.

The jungle in this area, and for a great distance in most directions, was a marshland of trees thickly placed, growing out of dark brown waters, with barely any of the brown waters exposed to the open sky. But down below, the trees had been plowed aside by massive, scaled tails, like a man sweeping papers off of a desk. Those trees piled up like dams around a deep depression in the marshland, maybe a two kilometers across. In this place, the brown waters gathered into a true lake, turning dark black with their unusual depths, even in the full sunlight.

Or perhaps that blackness was simply from the hydras that lived there, for in those dark waters, were glittering lights. In the daytime, and to the untrained eye, those lights almost blended in with the sparkling reflection of the sun. But looking closer, Ophiel could tell that those glittering lights were like stars, upon a darkest blue background. That fit with the purported elements of these variants, for this much truth was practically written upon the hydras themselves.

Those same stars glittered on the dark blue scales of the hydras, each of which lounged in those waters, looking like sleepy bundles of snakes hiding just under the water’s surface. They probably hunted at night, but for now, they slept.

Their very presence was destroying their environment, but they probably didn’t care. The edge of their lake was brown with death, and to the north, in the direction the marshy waters flowed, the land was half-leafless, with dark, shimmering waters killing everything that was within five meters of the surface. A few stubborn leaves clung to the tops of many trees, but there was no wildlife. The trees themselves seemed to be able to withstand some of the Extreme Light, but they were dying, too.

As Ophiel descended to the waters, to explore the dead marshland, the edge of his sunform began to glitter with flecks of white. The Extreme Light here was strong. And then Ophiel dipped down, all the way to the surface of the water to inspect the runoff. This close to the toxic hydras’ signature power, Ophiel’s sunform edge was completely white. It was hard to see past the interference, but Ophiel managed well enough since he had many, many eyes, and more senses than just vision.

Ophiel moved north, inspecting the waters, seeing how far and how deep the damage went.

After a quick inspection of ten kilometers, Erick pulled Ophiel back, back to the air high above the hydras’ lair. The creator had seen more than enough to know that the hydras had to die.

The toxins of the hydras spread out from their lair, flowing north with the waters of the marsh, gradually spreading east and west and yet not diminishing in power at all except by diluting. How long had this been going on? Only two weeks? Really?

Back on the other side of the world, Erick got a repeated answer of two weeks, though they believed that the hydras were normal toxic hydras for years before that. No one bothered them, though, and their toxins never reached that far, until two weeks ago, when the problems started.

Ophiel felt a shudder pass through him.

And then he got to work. Ophiel fluttered above the targets, stabilizing himself 500 meters above the center of the lair. Power flowed through him.

An abyssal star broke the bright blue sky, shifting the world to shadows, bringing darkness to the day.

Hydras roared as they woke from slumber, recognizing the threat. They cast off the surface of the lake like sloughing skin, their dark scales glittering in the sunlight, and in the light of the Star above. The largest hydra opened three of its seven maws. Starlight burst forth like beams of dark radiance, carving across the sky, but dying in fits and spurts as the abyssal Star shone its own [Luminosity]s, breaking up the attack far, far before it could reach the Star.

And then the Star pulled. Health and Mana flowed from the monsters like streamers of glitter, empowering the Star above to pull even harder.

The seven-headed hydra stuck three heads into its lake, sucking up its star-filled waters to refill its own power. After a few seconds of buildup, the hydra opened the maw of its central head. Power flared like a supernova, blasting out of the hydra as meters-thick white light. The attack neared the Star, and then it failed. The hydra’s power struck some invisible force a hundred meters from the Star, breaking from a laminar flow into a scattered rush of light that spiraled outward, and then swirled inward, like a black hole sucking in a sun. That power coiled around the Abyssal Star, eventually vanishing into the depths completely.

The four-headed hydra tried a different sort of attack. It slipped through the light, up, up, into the sky, riding the shadows and the light, bypassing the comparatively-invisible Ophiel still hanging out in the middle of the fight; ignored. The hydra [Illusionwalk]ed close to the hateful Star, trying to attack it directly with shorter-range starlight burts. That was a mistake. From one flickering illusion to the next, the hydra flailed as though realizing it had landed in the maw of a much larger monster. It tried to get away, but [Luminosity] ate at its attempts to [Illusionwalk]. The hydra suddenly ripped to bloody chunks as its [Illusionwalk] failed spectacularly.

Chunks of hydra rained down from the Abyssal Sky.

The five-headed hydra was the only one who went defensive. It tried to dive deep to get away from the hateful Star. This was a successful tactic, as the Abyssal Star could not reach past the surface of the toxic waters. There was no easy way to get to that particular hydra, but then Seven-Head took away Five-Head’s covers.

With six of its seven heads in the lake, drinking deep, Seven-Head drained the starlight in the waters, pulling from every direction, pulling power into itself, into its central maw. It released a great blast, twice as large as before.

The Abyssal Star merely drank the starlight deep. And now, it reached its shadowy tendrils down into the waters, beyond the surface, to attack Five-Head. Glittering lights Drained out of Five-Head, causing Five-Head to launch out of the waters again, to roar with brightness, and to flicker in place, to shoot its own beams upward, to fail exactly as Seven-Head had failed.

Erick had seen enough.

He had Ophiel call out to the monsters, to ask if they were people. For a full minute he tried to talk to them, but the hydras knew no words; they were not people.

Ophiel got the signal to end it, so he did.

Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Went the [Luminous Beam]s, cutting deep into necks and backs and tails. Starlight blood flowed into the marshy waters. Illusions, or something, tried to seal up the cracks in the wounds Ophiel had caused, for he had not outright killed the hydras! How strange.

The obvious solution was obvious.

Swipe!

Swipe!

Swipe!

Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe!

There.

Now the monsters were dead, and they weren’t getting back up…

But let’s gather all the shiny cores to make sure.

Annnnnd there! 16 grand cores!

Job done!

- - - -

Erick pulled back all the way back, bringing his new wealth through the [Gate], and back to Ooloraptoor. Sixteen grand cores floated along with Ophiel, each of them as bright and as dark as the night sky. Oliolo dismissed her [Gate] and followed Ophiel back to Erick, though the grand cores continued on to stand upon a platform near the yurt.

Once under the [Undertow Star], the grand cores seemed to glitter even more, as something happened between them and the Star above. The mana flow that usually went into the Star also seemed to twist around the grand cores, like eddies in a river. Whatever was happening there, nothing immediately worrying occurred, but Erick would keep an eye on the situation.

The cores didn’t have any parasites on them, either. Erick checked!

Wellowbye smiled a bright smile as he stood there, on the back of his chair. His wings flickered like he had too much joy to contain in his small body. “Th~ank—” His voice cracked, morphing from something deep, to that of an overactive child. And then he paused and regained himself. He spoke seriously, “Thank you, Archmage Flatt. We will transfer a suitable gold payment to your Mage Bank account, but I do not wish to offend, so if you could give me a number we will gladly pay it. You have saved thousands of souls from having to upend their entire lives, and we are grateful.”

Probably more than ‘thousands’. Even though Erick had not seen the main city that Wellowbye was trying to protect, he saw the devastation caused by the toxic hydra runoff, for there were many pixie settlements in the trees of the marsh. Some of the trees managed to look like a hundred dollhouses crammed into each other, like some sort of surrealist painting. But they had all been abandoned. Tiny broken doors swayed in the breeze, tiny carpets were rumpled to the sides of rooms, furniture had been tossed in the rush to evacuate, and windows lay broken.

Wherever Wellowbye came from, they had likely sent out many, many calls, out into the greater world, asking for help with the Starlight Illusion Hydras. For whatever reason, Wellowbye’s plea to Erick was the only one that had been answered by someone capable of killing the monsters. Was Messalina falling down on the job? Or was ‘monster clearing’ the job of a villager of Messalina’s who had been killed in the Red Dot attack?

It wasn’t like the pixies would ever go to the Headmaster, right?

“Don’t worry about payment. You and your neighbors have a lot of rebuilding to do.” Erick said, “I’m just glad I could help, Wellowbye.”

Wellowbye bowed. “Thank you, Archmage Flatt.”

Erick dismissed the Privacy surrounding them and bid farewell to the pixies. And then he told everyone else still waiting around that this area was going to be very uncomfortable for anyone who wasn’t approved personnel.

He dismissed the [Undertow Star] in the sky and cast a new one, Shaping it appropriately to his yurt, and to the area outside of his space, for 80 meters in every direction. He only clipped a few of the slowest people in the light of the spellwork.

- - - -

Inside the yurt, Erick smiled wide as he collapsed into his chair, saying, “That took a while! How about a late dinner, Poi, and then we can do everything we need to do with the Mind Mages and the mental monsters of Nelboor, ey?”

Poi sat down in his own chair, briefly pausing, before saying, “Yes. We can do that tonight.”

Nirzir glanced around, her nervous eyes landing on Jane and then Teressa. “Does this mean another late night of horror stories?”

“Nope.” Erick briefly enjoyed Nirzir’s young optimism before crushing it, “This means a very late night for me and Poi and many, many other people, all involved in real life horror stories. I’ll tell you about the most horrible of them as they’re happening, if you wish. Or you could go to sleep.”

Nirzir’s already white skin paled even further.

“Those aren’t the fun kind of stories, boss,” Teressa rolled her eyes.

“They are not,” Erick agreed.

Nirzir instantly scowled, asking Teressa, rather loudly, “You tell those for FUN?!”

“Well sure!” Teressa said, “But you gotta understand that the kinds of stories I tell are either fake or informative; instructional. Not real; fake.”

“I don’t understand the difference,” Nirzir said, pushing back, seeming to come briefly out of her shell.

Teressa huffed. “No one talks about how their army buddies were eaten by shadow leviathans, or how they’re investigating a family that was brutally murdered by—” She continued, “Those kinds of stories are not fun. They’re part of the job, and no one wants to hear the nit and the grit, and how everything is covered in shit and blood after a fight. Or how hard it is to lift your sword after you’ve lifted it a thousand times already, but you can’t stop, because if you stop then the monsters eat another friend.” Teressa tried not to glare, and she mostly succeeded.

Nirzir retreated into herself a little, saying, “Oh. That’s the difference, isn’t it.”

Teressa suddenly realized she had overstepped. She pulled back, saying, “I go for realism in my stories, but everything is heightened to near-unreality, and the monsters don’t eat kids, or any of that other bad stuff. Some people can enjoy soldier memoirs, but I am not one of those people.”

Nirzir nodded a little, then said, “Thank you for telling me.”

About half a minute passed with awkward silences filling the yurt.

Meanwhile, Jane was pulling out food from the cooler. Now that it was all set on the table, she bulldozed over everything that had just been said, declaring, “Dinner! Just gotta heat it up.”

Erick smiled at his daughter, saying, “Thank you,” as he applied some [Heat Ward]s to the food.

Erick said, “You know, Jane? The elders of Ooloraptoor were talking about how nice the engine would be, but I’m not going to give them that. Instead, I think I’m going to try and reinvent the electric motor. I think I can do it rather easily because I have all the pieces, but even more important than that, [Battery], [Magnetize], and [Metalshape] are already a part of the Script, so that means easy electrical generation for all.”

“I was wondering how far you were going to go with your engineering.” Jane asked, “What was all that fire about, though?”

“Normal Elemental Fire Magic usually burns metals— Or they oxidize them, I guess? Anyway. Normal fire spells are only useful for indirect heating, but I turned the Particle Spell [Incandescent] into an aura, so now I can directly heat metals without using Elemental Fire, to easily melt metals to liquid. I plan on using that, and a [Vacuum] spell I made, and the Condense line of spells I worked out a while ago, to figure out the exact metal content of the steel ingots Ooloraptoor gave me. Ah.” Erick said, “I might need to make a pressurize spell, too. Not sure. I’m still remembering steel phase diagrams, and all that. Anyway: From there, I’ll learn how to harden, temper, and mix metals to see what I can do with them. I’m figuring that I can do a lot! Or at least I’ll be able to make gears and the precision equipment needed to make a working DC engine that won’t break once I stress it.”

Jane smiled. “I think I still want a sword from the Adamantine Smiths, for now. Maybe I’ll swing one of yours around in a year or something.”

“Of course!” Erick said, laughing once. And then he paled. “That means you would rely on one of my swords to save your life. Uh.” Erick said, “I’m never giving you a sword, Jane. I’m never making weapons or armor.”

Jane just laughed; head back, deep laughter. Nirzir chuckled a bit, while Teressa smiled.

Poi, however, just breathed deep, smelling dinner and changing the topic, “Oh. That smells good.”

Teressa said, “Nirzir helped to cook it; it’s pretty great. You worked with a butcher today, didn’t you?”

“I did!” Nirzir sat up. She briefly smiled at Teressa, then she said to Erick, “I think the cooks meant to scare me when they introduced me to butchery, but it was only a bit worse than learning how to heal people.”

Teressa barked a laugh. Nirzir only smiled wider. Jane chuckled. For a brief moment, Erick recalled house parties back on Earth, where everyone was in a good mood and laughter came easy. This here, was almost that.

Erick said, “Ah! That reminds me: I promised to talk to you about that Undertow spell you made.”

Nirzir’s eyes seemed to sparkle.

Erick got up and went to the table to start on his dinner, as he said, “All you really need to know is about Permanency, I think. So I’ll start there.”

Nirzir got up from her seat and joined Erick at the table. Soon enough, Poi dragged himself out of his chair and joined them, too.

Erick spoke of his experiments with wardlights, how he put those lights in front of funneled mana in a dungeon, in an attempt to understand how the only ‘Permanency’ option in the Open Script functioned, and how to replicate those techniques into other magics. That part of the conversation didn’t take too long, for Nirzir seemed to easily pick up what he was putting down.

After that, the conversation moved on to talk of [Personal Ward]s and the ‘enchanting’ of oneself.

“The goal of a [Personal Ward] is to ensure that outside forces are unable to harmfully interact with the self.” Nirzir rhetorically asked, “But where is the line of ‘harm’ drawn? A Force sword swung by an assailant is easy enough of a concept to counter. What you do in that case, is deny the Force spells of others from interacting with your self through the various Voiding spellwork that we’ve gone over before— Well.” Her eyes held sudden worry. “That is what I would do. But I am very familiar with Void. I would never, ever, suggest this method to anyone else... Except for someone like you, Erick. … Maybe not even you, though. Void is dangerous.”

Erick nodded. “I understand.”

Nirzir paused, gauging Erick. After an unsure moment, she continued, “Denying various Elemental attacks is easy enough; you can combine 6 anti-songs into a [Personal Ward] rather simply. In fact, using Void as your base Element, you can counter almost all magics at once, though without specific focuses, then your counter fails when it comes up against Elemental Sun, or Elemental Blood, for instance. Any of the Esoteric Elements can only be halved using this method.

“So in that case, you need to focus your anti-song against those specific Esoteric Elements. It is hard to include so many anti-songs in a working, so focusing on the larger, more dangerous Esoteric Elements is a good idea. Blood. Destruction. Vile and Exalted, if you’re worried about demons or angels.

“But these defenses do nothing against the steel of a sword, or the carving fingers of a true martial master. In those cases, you must— Now this is the truly dangerous part. You must include imbuements of elemental sources into your own body, as one does when they use an Elemental Body. And you must have perfect control over those elements, too, or else a simple [Stoneshape] from an enemy could rip apart the solidness you have tried to imbue into your flesh.

“This is the most complicated part of making a perfect [Immaculate Defense], and I have barely scratched the surface of this third of the perfect [Personal Ward].

“For even if you do that all correctly, your spell might harm the natural processes of your own body. This is the final problem to overcome when creating the perfect [Immaculate Defense], for this is not the Old Cosmology; we need our hearts and brains and blood to live.” Nirzir said, “And that’s the basic overview. What do you think?”

Nirzir waited with hope in her eyes, wondering if she had done good enough. For what it was worth, Erick had never considered a thousand-vector, anti-magic, anti-physical, anti-damage [Personal Ward] as the proper solution to the problem of ‘having enemies’. It was a damned good solution, though! Complicated as all heck, though.

Nirzir had certainly given Erick a lot to think about.

Erick said, “There is a solution to all of this that you must have heard of already. Don’t you have a Domain?”

Nirzir frowned a little, then she paused. “Your Domains are a good enough defense? For you?”

Erick chuckled. “Ah! You got me, there. You can never have enough defenses.”

Nirzir brightened.

They spoke for a while longer, but soon enough dinner was over, and it was time to get back to work; the Mind Mages were ready.

And Erick found that he really enjoyed the work.

Sure, if you looked at all of Veird and all of the problems out there, there was so much work to do, that there would never be an end to it, not to mention the physical strain that such a workload put on the body. After a full 9 hours of hard mental effort against Erick’s petitioners, Poi was still chipper, but he’d be flagging come the morning. Erick, himself, could only do a few days of this before he collapsed. But for now, for the amount of work he had put in front of himself, Erick was more than capable of doing what needed to be done. Erick imagined that in the future, he would need to assist the Mind Mages with this job for a few times a year, for a few years, but after that, they should have other people capable of casting [Cascade Imaging].

So, for now, Erick enjoyed the work, for every single person he helped, every single threat he ended, was yet another light preserved, or lit; yet another small strengthening of civilization against the danger of monsters, and against the evils of the abuse of magic.

- - - -

That night, and most of the next morning, more than three million blue targets appeared across the whole of Nelboor, and Mind Mages moved without care for borders, allegiances, or privacy, to erase those blue markers from the face of Veird. Soon enough, it was over.

As Poi collapsed in his bed and Erick closed his own eyes for a few hours of sleep, before he got back to work with all the petitioners waiting outside, he realized that if he wanted to keep doing this then he needed a whole organization at his beck and call. He assumed that some of the shadelings (and probably a lot of other people, too) would be up for the opportunity to spread good out in the world, so that was a theoretical ‘organization’ that Erick could call his own. Once Erick figured out [Gate], he could even help people all over the world, without needing to actually be in those places in person.

That thought led Erick to another: The Headmaster basically already did this, with his Elites. He even enlisted the help of Hell and Celes in order to have the ‘Gate Network’ necessary to enable such an organization. According to Jane, there was a cave on Oceanside where an angel and a demon had a ‘Quest Board’ that was populated with needs from around the world, and when Hell or Celes saw a person in need, or a monster that needed to be killed, they’d put a quest up on the board. Their system worked much like the Class Ability, Quest Board, but there were no points put up as rewards; only a system of ‘contribution points’, or something, that allowed Elites to purchase magical equipment for fractions of the real cost. Erick was pretty sure the Elites still needed to pay money, though, in addition to the contribution points; they probably did.

And apparently magical equipment wasn’t the only thing on offer. Artifacts and learning and other options were possible, too, but Jane wasn’t privy to most of that, so Erick didn’t actually know.

… Hmm.

That whole system seemed like a good talking point to bring up with the Headmaster, the next time they met in a physical setting. How did the old dragon get the angels and demons to work together? Something to find out! And, hey! The old dragon had offered to speak of ending this Converter Angel threat before it came back to bite Erick in the ass, and that was good, too.

… Maybe after the trip to see the Adamantine Smiths.