Erick Flatt, [60-ish] [Current Year: 1453 (Veird, layer 789), ??? (Margleknot)] [CURRENT REALITY=Layer 0, Margleknot]
Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 34%, 33%, 33%
Soul: 32.5m per day / 376 per second , [Darkness Level = 2.19x Ascension baseline]
Body: 207
Mind: 304
Overall Stability: ↑↑ [ 376, -3] Basic upkeep
Mp: 5.8m/∞, ↑ [ 128, -1] Basic upkeep
Hp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [ 124, -1] Basic upkeep
Pp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [ 124, -1] Basic upkeep
Resons: ??? [???]
- - - -
Erick stood on the balcony of his house in Margleknot, under a sun-filled sky.
One more sun held in that sky today, as compared to yesterday. That was Erick's Benevolence Sun… or at least that's what he was calling it in his mind. Anyway.
ssage stars continued to pile up by the gate to his house like explosions of fireworks.
He would get to the starscape of ssages soon enough, and all the rest of all the tasks he had set for himself, but first he wanted to do a few things to make the rest of this ti easier.
Resons were the uber-currency of Margleknot, as far as Erick knew, though he was rather certain that many places took many other currencies. For the average person, 1 reson was 1/1000th a resurrection, and that seed way more important than buying bread for the day, especially if people only made 1 reson a day, or sothing like that. Erick honestly did not know. 'How many resons does a person make per day?' was among the many, many questions that he simply didn't know, and hadn't really thought to ask anyone when had been asking those questions. Whatever the case, resons could be 'used up', and 'go dry', like Erick had been back there at the final casts of [Reson Gathering] up there on that sun, which ant they were limited.
And therefore smaller currencies must exist, because bartering 'this' for 'that' simply wasn't viable… as far as Erick knew. Maybe smaller economies in Margleknot did bartering? Large economies did not barter, for sure… right?
Erick truly didn't know.
He needed so experience with the economy, but first he needed a 'wallet'.
He already had a 'wallet', technically. Resons naturally existed inside people, where they naturally accrued based on personal drive and desire and 'reasons for being', sticking alongside everything else that made a person a person.
He also had a way to force production of resons, through [Reson Gathering], and throwing [Renew] at the gatherer.
Now, to make all the rest of this easier, Erick needed his mana-to-reson generator to be an internal system that slipped more resons into his very being and which allowed him to 'open the tap' and pour out crystallized resons on command from, like, his aura? Erick wasn't sure about that. But. Yeah. That sounded good.
Okay! Basic logic solved for.
Now to make it happen…
"I think I know what sort of gift I want to give Lionshard for his help, too."
Erick went inside of his house to sit on a pillow in his mage tower. The Malevolence Beast was still alive on the first floor down there, but it wasn't doing anything. It remained locked down, and that was good enough for now. Maybe Erick would do sothing with it later? Maybe not.
Anyway.
Erick sat down on the third floor of his mage tower and peered inside of his soul.
The entirety of his Status, in Benevolence crystal form, floated before him. It was made with Book-shaped Benevolence and other Elental crystals, and it was a lot more complicated than an Escher painting. Still understandable, though. [Reson Gathering], his new spell which he had made, floated right over there. It was a multidinsional button he could press which did many things, all at once, all of them completely unlike most of Erick's other spells.
Ignoring the complexity of the spell itself, and frashifting to make that vision so, Erick saw the spell shift into a simple Renew-symbol that was not simple at all. It beca a web-like construction made of many filants that coalesced into most-of-a-circle, with stretched-out tendrils going everywhere. All of that central construction was focused on the break between the ends of the symbol. The spellwork would take in mana from the space around it, and make resons in that crack.
All of that looked good.
Erick frashifted again, looking inward to himself, and to the symbol, and he saw more filants connecting the two. Erick had frashifted to see how his body connected to the spellwork, to see how mana got from inside to outside, and into proper shapes. This, then, was so of the way in which Erick used his own resources to cast this spell.
[Reson Gathering] was not a spell that was cast using mana, though. Or at least not fully. It was a spell made of Benevolence, and Erick saw where his mana fit into the spell, but there were only 9 bits of Benevolence in there. [Reson Gathering] was primarily a spell cast using resons.
Tracing those reson lines...
Oh.
Erick saw a forgotten mory that he had heard about a long ti ago, but which never really ca up, for various reasons.
Inside of his soul, inside of his physical body, and inside of his mind, were shadowy lines of power that connected to the space that used to hold the core in his chest. Those shadowy lines were his mana channels, and yet, they were not.
In his ascension, Erick had beco a fully crystallized being and also a person of flesh and mind. His original core was gone. The mana channels that his body used to have running alongside his veins and nerves, in a shadowy duplication of his circulatory and nerve system, were gone.
He had never used them anyway. The Script and basic physical biology did that better.
Quilatalap had spoken a few tis about how mana channels in the Old Cosmology were useful for keeping the body intact, and for exploring one's aura, but they were an obsolete system from the Old Cosmology. Those old channels were what one used to balance oneself and rid oneself of unwanted mana. Now there were blood and nerves and a digestive system that emptied out concentrated mana from the body in order to prevent monsterization. The Script did aura exploration a whole lot better, too.
The old mana channels still existed, though, because they were a very important part of how things used to be in the Old Cosmology. Inertia that large could not be denied.
Erick had completely ignored his mana channels when he ascended, though.
But since he had desired to keep the sa sort of body, here were so mana channels that he never used, reappearing again in an unexpected way.
His actual body did not have mana channels. Erick checked himself out in the real world for a good four minutes to make sure of that. And yeah; he had no mana channels.
But his spellwork thought he had mana channels.
The reson 'wallet' of his body was all throughout his soul, mind, and body, but [Reson Gathering] seed to be attached to the lines of his forr mana channels just a little bit more than all the rest of his crystallization. Even as he watched the spell inside of him, as he gazed upon its connection to his resources, he watched those possible connection lines of his soul and his spell shift a little, like the moving of a target. Those movent lines flowed alongside the spaces that would have contained his mana channels just a little bit more than they flowed everywhere else.
Honestly, if Erick hadn't checked out this whole reson-wallet problem, looking for a way to stuff more resons into himself, then he probably never would have noticed this about himself. Or at least he wouldn't have noticed until so unknown ti down the road.
… The mory of mana channels inside of his crystallized self were… sothing.
Erick wasn't sure if they were a weakness or not.
They were a foible; a way of being and doing that didn't need to be that way, but which simply was.
They were how his spells activated; where the resources for them ca from, when Erick wasn't directing that power himself, through his aura. When he had his aura out he could make magic happen anywhere inside his aura, because his aura was him. Otherwise his Mana, Health, and Psyche, remained inside of his body, growing denser and denser over ti. His mana channels were…
"Not really important now, actually."
Erick considered why he started this exploration of himself in the first place.
He wanted to make a system to hold extra resons in his body. Did he need to figure out his obsolete mana channels? No, he did not. Might be sothing fun to learn eventually, but he didn't really care about them, and his Lightning Path was telling him that whatever he was observing right now wasn't important at all.
So Erick ignored his 'not-mana-channels', and went back to his [Reson Gathering] spellwork.
He copied the spell inside of his body. That took so doing, but he got it done, and now he had two of the sa spell.
The second one automatically hooked into his everything exactly as the other one had, sending filants out into his Soul, Body, and Mind. The basic form of the spell was exactly the sa as the other one, and would produce a reson-Renew outside of his body, wherever he wanted it to be.
Erick ca back to himself, breathed for a mont, taking so ti to let ti pass, because if he fucked up this next part he wanted to be able to easily return to this ti period, and a larger break ant easier targeting for [Return].
And then he delved back into his Status.
Taking the second [Reson Gathering] into his control, Erick plucked at the 'logistical' filants that would have created an exterior gatherer, drawing all mana inside of the gatherer and making resons, clipping all of them off. Now he was left with a [Reson Gathering] that only took from his own body.
It only took in 9 Benevolence and a bunch of resons, though.
Erick restrung the spell, adding logistical filants to the reson production, and then stringing those 'exit points' all throughout his entire body. Those exit points for resons weren't really there, and Erick wasn't really doing what he seed to be doing. This was all conceptual, frashifting soulwork, but it should work exactly as he intended it to work.
And now he had a spell that was inside of him, that took his resources and made resons and put those resons into his own Status.
Erick already had a part of his Status which could asure those resons, too, and which could keep track of so of those resons.
All the plumbing was there inside of him to let him just… hook up this new part and see what happened! But that seed like a dangerous step.
So Erick ca back to himself and took another break, giving himself another 'save point' to co back to if he ssed up…
Erick considered.
His Status had Book Magic in order to allow him to classify stuff inside of himself. Did this mutation of [Reson Gathering] work right, in that classification, Book Magic sort of way? Erick called up his Status box for this new spell, to see if that part of his Status worked like he imagined it would.
Words appeared in the air.
Reson Wallet, permanent self-enchantnt, ?????
Make a reson gatherer inside of your soul and turn on the money. 9 mana to 1 reson.
Unintended side effects? Probably.
Erick grinned at that, and then he laughed.
"It worked! … Probably."
Erick had a think.
"… It's fine? It's fine."
And then he went back inside his soul.
With careful touches, Erick made a 'tube' of resources from his Darkness, which went to his Status, and then he hooked up a connection from his Status to [Reson Wallet], and then back again. The tap was not turned on. This was just getting the starting stuff ready.
Erick wondered if he had created a New Stat. 'Reson Wallet'. An odd na for a Stat, for sure.
Erick pulled out of himself and checked his Status.
- -
Erick Flatt, [60-ish] [Current Year: 1453 (Veird, layer 789), ??? (Margleknot)] [CURRENT REALITY=Layer 0, Margleknot]
Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 34%, 33%, 33%
Reson allocation rate: 0%
Soul: 32.5m per day / 376 per second , [Darkness Level = 2.19x Ascension baseline]
Body: 207
Mind: 304
Overall Stability: ↑↑ [ 376, -3] Basic upkeep
Mp: 5.8m/∞, ↑ [ 128, -1] Basic upkeep
Hp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [ 124, -1] Basic upkeep
Pp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [ 124, -1] Basic upkeep
Resons: ??? [ ???]
- -
Erick smiled wide. "OKAY! Wow. That worked. Okay. Good." And then he chuckled nervously. "Now to turn on the tap—" He paused.
He thought.
"… does this count as a New Stat anyway? Can I… quantify this? Find out how many resons I have baseline?"
… He thought.
"No. Resons are simply not quantifiable; not really. That little bottom readout isn't ever going to be right, either, just like how the Darkness level is incorrect. I have no idea how to asure Darkness, and no clue at all how to asure resons. Darkness is only estimated based on the initial start I had when I ascended, and just to know how far I have co, or if anyone tries to steal my Darkness. Resons are similarly unknowable, but I can certainly count out how many I might create from here on out… Probably."
… Probably.
Erick nodded.
And then he went back inside of himself and turned on the tap.
Just a little bit!
Erick watched as mana flowed from his Darkness, through his foundational Stats, forming the basis of his crystallized self, and then to his Status, forming the simultaneous layer of his entirety. That's where it struck his [Reson Wallet], and changed. White beca gold and then flowed back into Erick's Status, and into his everything.
… It seed to be working. Nothing was breaking.
His little reson-creation system system could be recognized, removed, and remade at a mont's notice, though. This set up… seed okay? It seed okay; yes.
Erick watched the reson system for a little while, watching Benevolence flow out from his everything, into a part of his everything that made goldish-resons, and then flow back into his everything, the resons fitting in smoothly with everything else. The resons were slightly gold colored, but when they slipped into Erick's soul, mind, and body, they beca nothing once again. They were there, for sure, but they weren't knowable.
Which was exactly what Erick had wanted.
Okay! Good.
Erick ca back to himse—
Well this is not ideal.
Erick was crusted over with golden crystal. It was 5 centiters thick in so places.
Erick checked parts of his status again.
- -
Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 33%, 31%, 31%
Reson allocation rate: 5%
Soul: 32.5m per day / 376 per second , [Darkness Level = 2.19x Ascension baseline]
Overall Stability: ↑↑ [ 361, -3] Basic upkeep
Mp: 5.8m/∞, ↑ [ 124, -1] Basic upkeep
Hp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [ 116, -1] Basic upkeep
Pp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [ 116, -1] Basic upkeep
Resons: 1 [ 19 = 2] Warning! Improper storage.
- -
Erick moved like an unstoppable force covered in ice. Resons broke to the ground like so much amber, shredding Erick's already-mangled clothes even further. As he moved, gold crystals broke away from uncomfortable places, and fell in sheets from his thighs and chest and back. Resons continued to fall from his skin, pushed out of his body like manifested honey that rapidly hardened, even as he moved around, like a continual rain of golden sand.
Erick ntally flicked off all reson allocation and the gold dust stopped. He shook out his hair and rubbed the resons from his eyes and other places, and then he put his hands on his hips.
He though—
"Ah! Maybe the mana channels can have a use after all?"
Erick went back into his soul and mucked around for a while, first figuring out how to add mana channels back to his body, or at least sothing like mana channels, and then actually doing that. Surprisingly, as soon as he started moving intent around, forming paths within his body to create what had been uncreated, the filants from his [Reson Wallet] began to shift to those mana channels. By the ti Erick was 10% of the way done with his channels, having only really started on the cavity in his chest where his core used to be and a few main channels down his torso and to his extremities, the channels began to reappear on their own.
Mana flexed inside of Erick.
Darkness twisted, filling his body with shadows of power.
Resons trapped in his flesh like gold dust between cells spilled out of his everything, filtering into pathways that did not exist anymore, but which sprang into existence when they realized that's what Erick wanted.
Erick's mana channels regrew all the easier for it—
[Reson Wallet] snapped to his mana channels, directly placing its main generative body in the space of his body and soul where his core used to be, and Erick allowed it. It was all conceptual, anyway. His body, soul, and mind hadn't changed at all.
But his paradoxically existent and non-existent mana channels did reappear, and when the channels to his brain truly regrew, that was when Erick let the whole thing take over on its own.
Erick watched as a forgotten part of himself regrew from Darkness and gold, and then the Darkness faded and the gold filed into place, vanishing from sight once again.
Erick checked himself out in the real world, and ntally turned on the tap.
White gold flowed into the shadows of his core space, rebuilding a part of himself that Erick had lost in the ascension. But also not. That white gold flickered and faded inward, becoming one with his Body, Mind, and Soul, turning invisible once again. His actual core never regrew. The process of reson creation was like a continual glittering that reflected within all of his new mana channels, like so sort of fiber optic light show.
- -
Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 33%, 31%, 31%
Reson allocation rate: 5%
Soul: 32.5m per day / 376 per second , [Darkness Level = 2.19x Ascension baseline]
Overall Stability: ↑↑ [ 361, -3] Basic upkeep
Mp: 5.8m/∞, ↑ [ 124, -1] Basic upkeep
Hp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [ 116, -1] Basic upkeep
Pp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [ 116, -1] Basic upkeep
Resons: 9 [ 19 = 2.1]
- -
So that seed to be working now.
And now he had 9 resons! Or at least 9 that he knew about, plus however many he had innately, or whatever.
This was good.
… Erick turned the tap 100% to resons—
Golden crystals shattered out of his body, crashing out in every direction, breaking the third floor of his mage tower and a small part of his house.
Erick turned the flow back down to 5%.
The flow turned normal.
Erick spent the next several monts extracting himself from his crystal prison, scattering gold out and away from his house, and then he took a few minutes to rebuild the mage tower with his Authority. Nothing was truly damaged, either physically in the real world or taphysically inside of Erick's soul, which was great news.
Erick went outside of the castle, onto the open ground with the grasses and the moss on Yggdrasil's root, to test out various percentages of reson conversion, going up slowly from 5%.
At 10%, Erick's core and mana channels were filled with a continuous swirl of gold-white light, like a constant roil of lightning-fire, that escaped his mana channels and core and began to show up inside his flesh. He had millions of Health preventing actual damage to him, though, so that golden outpour only manifested when it actually escaped his skin. Or when it exited other, more easily exitable areas.
Erick didn't think too much about that.
At 11%, the lightning-fire easily expanded past his skin, manifesting amber in sheets that fell from his chest and thighs and all the other parts of him.
Erick turned the flow down to 9%, and kept it there, because 9% seed good. At 9% Erick's core-space turned into an illusion of a gold-white core, and his mana channels appeared more 'epheral' than 'firework' or 'lightning'. Maybe it was a slow strobe light? Yeah, that worked. No actual reson manifesting, though; all of that stuff went into his Status, exactly like it should.
He was now at 3.75 resons per second production, at a cost of 33.75 mana per second. He wasn't sure what he could do with resons, aside from spend them and probably cast magics with them…
Hmm.
Erick waited till he had a thousand resons, which didn't take very long at all, and then he controlled his aura to add… hmm. 6 resons? Yes. Erick added 6 resons to [Fireball] spellwork and flickered the flas upward—
A sun of fire replaced the entire sky overhead, burning, incinerating—
Erick rapidly threw dispels and siphon at the magic, drawing it back, pulling it inward, erasing the flas as best he could, and then when that didn't fully work he slamd his Authority around the magic, condensing it from a contained nuclear fire down to Fire-aspected resons that rapidly decayed into nothing.
Erick had accidentally carved away the upper half of his mage tower. He had accidentally done a lot. He burned away a good several square kiloters of green away from Yggdrasil's white root, and set the surface of the lake to boiling. Yggdrasil's actual root was just a little blackened. Seed fine? Sure. Seed fine.
Erick looked around and said to himself, "Okay! That was a mistake. What the fuck did I just do?"
He thought.
He did it again, but this ti he did a much more controlled creation of fire.
A tiny ball of pure white heat unfurled in front of Erick. It was like standing on the surface of a sun, or inside of a blast furnace. Yggdrasil's root blackened. Erick's Health took a huge, continuous hit, but he had millions of Health in the tank so this was nothing to be worried about. Even Yggdrasil's damage was only surface deep. And so, Erick stared at the fire, and tried to understand it—
"Ah ha!"
It reminded Erick of sothing he hadn't felt in a while.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
It was the Red Dot.
This, then, was magnitude 9 Fire Magic; the instantiation of True Fire.
Erick sent his Mana Siphon-laced tendrils of Benevolence into the ball of fire and soaked the damage, pulling out the power of the thing he had created. Embarrassingly, or maybe worriedly, Erick took a while to break down his 'White Dot', which showed him the power of resons.
It seed that resons were like ritual magic.
This was singing-at-the-mana levels of power.
So.
A lot of power.
And now Erick had...
- -
Erick Flatt, [60-ish] [Current Year: 1453 (Veird, layer 789), ??? (Margleknot)] [CURRENT REALITY=Layer 0, Margleknot]
Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 31%, 30%, 30%
Reson allocation rate: 9%
Soul: 32.9m per day / 380 per second , [Darkness Level = 2.22x Ascension baseline]
Body: 208
Mind: 306
Overall Stability: ↑↑ [ 345, -3] Basic upkeep
Mp: 5.8m/∞, ↑ [ 118, -1] Basic upkeep
Hp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [ 104, -1] Basic upkeep
Pp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [ 104, -1] Basic upkeep
Resons: 2,187 [ 34 = 3.8]
- -
"… I have 2,187 of these, in addition to whatever I already had. Wow, those pile up fast," Erick said... But then he looked at the rest of his Status. "And my Darkness went from 2.19 to 2.22, which ans that I either significantly grew my Darkness by doing this act, or this was residual growth from the sun in the sky and all of Margleknot knowing now... Really hard to know— But my Body and Mind went up, too? How did… They were at 207 and 304… How did they go up?"
Erick looked inside of his soul and saw resons soaking slowly into his Stats. All of his Stats. They weren't just disappearing like they were into his Soul, Mind, and Body... And mostly Mind, actually. That's where almost all of the resons were going. Resons liked being inside the mind? Sure. Nice thing to know. Kind of expected, too. Other than that, the resons were sticking around for a fraction of a mont longer inside all of his entire self. They were empowering his Base Stats.
For so reason.
Erick told them ntally. 'No. Stop that'.
And that worked.
The resons began rapidly disappearing into Erick's everything once again. They still mostly went into his Mind, though. Resons were reasons for being, after all; they were consciousness manifested, among other ways of calling them.
It was still surprising that telling them how to act got them acting properly once again, though.
Erick pulled out of his soul.
He checked his Status, and it looked good. The property was a right ss, though. Exposed roots. Burned moss and grass. Broken castle.
Erick washed the land with his Authority and fixed everything, taking care to make sure the land was stable and the castle was good and the waters were fine. There were still quite a lot of crystallized resons everywhere, but Erick tried waving his Authority at them, hinting with a bit of Intent that Yggdrasil could take that away for his own use—
Words appeared.
Thanks, Father.
The golden crystals sunk into the white root and then vanished from sight and sense as the power flowed away, off to wherever it was these things went. To all the rest of Margleknot and beyond, Erick expected.
Erick tested releasing resons next; not casting with them.
He held out his hand and willed open the mana veins that went to his palm, almost like he was channeling mana, but different. Gold-white crystals erupted up and out of his palm and halfway down his forearm, shredding his flesh. Blood spurted. It was rather uncomfortable, but not too uncomfortable. Erick shook out his hand and let the resons fall all around him, then he plucked out a few stubborn crystals from his palm. Flesh nded. Skin healed. No actual damage had been done, aside from a few hundred points of Health.
Not enough to worry about.
Erick tried using his aura to exude the resons, instead of channeling them through his veins.
With a white glow around his hand and a comfortable channel, Erick deposited a gold-white sphere of what might have been '1 reson' into his palm. The white rapidly vanished from the gold, leaving behind a sowhat mundane-looking amber-like sphere about the size of a small egg.
Erick held it up to the light and witnessed unfiltered brilliance.
It was difficult to understand exactly what he was seeing, but he knew Possibility when he saw it. There was fire and lightning and healing and void all inside this little bit of reson, but there was also undiluted purpose. This little thing felt like it was a rock at the top of a hill. If it fell this way or that it would be the start of an avalanche that could change the world.
Or maybe it was simply a really good cup of coffee. A cup of brew that you rember having on vacation at so seaside cafe even ten years later; a mory that keeps you going when you least expected it to crop up.
With a small grin, Erick tried swallowing the reson with his aura, taking it back into himself—
The reson uncreated itself as it flowed into Erick's body and settled down with his Self.
So that was that!
Erick wasn't able to do that with Benevolence crystals… But then again he had never tried outside of the Script.
Huh.
Erick released Benevolence next, trying to make a simple crystal. That worked, and soon Erick held a ter-long length of glowing white Benevolence about as thick as his forearm that shimred prismatically. He tried absorbing the crystal through his aura, as simply as he had absorbed the resons, and the crystal ended up in shards inside his hand and flesh. So yeah. That didn't work.
When he used Mana Siphon on it, though, that worked. Of course Mana Siphon worked on mana, though.
Erick checked his soul and saw that [Reson Wallet] had hooked into his body a lot more than Mana Siphon had, which probably accounted for that oddness there…
Interesting.
Well.
Moving on.
Erick went around with his aura and sucked up the resons that had erupted from his flesh earlier.
Feeling really good about all of his new paynt system options, Erick decided it was ti to get back out there. First thing he needed was, again, clothes.
Erick plotted out a little garden space and then grew a cottonfruit plant with a bit of [Grow]. Soon, fibrous, long fruit pods dangled from branches, and Erick plucked them. Transforming wet cottonfruit into actual clothes was as easy as using his aura to press, dry, string, and then weave. He went rather fine with the cloth, going slow and probably with a bit too much perfectionism, because he was making clothes that he hoped he could wear more than once.
Once he was clothed again in white and black and bits of platinum, Erick made himself a whole lot of Benevolence-soaked platinum in order to create a proper gift for Lionshard, to thank him for his assistance with a bunch of stuff. Turning his right pointer fingernail into a dragonclaw, Erick began carving power into the platinum, turning mana-soaked tal into a ring of [Renew] about a ter across. A little while later, with the [Renew] systems working, Erick imbued the ring with [Reson Gathering].
The 'Ring of Reson Gathering' glowed a subtle white as it hovered there where Erick had put it, due to so stabilizing Force Magics.
Erick threw so basic Benevolence mana at his creation and shards of gold crystal spilled out of the empty space at the top of the circle. Good. It should work with all types of mana, too, but to be sure about that, Erick Altered his mana to a mishmash of Elents. The ring transford a shower of random mana into gold resons, but the conversion rate… Seed to be less than Erick's Benevolence could do…
Oh.
This was actually a big deal. Conversion rates outside of Benevolence were not great.
"… This is fine? Lionshard just needs to Alter to Benevolence first, and it can't be that hard, right?"
… Maybe it was really hard, actually. Erick had no fra of reference for that difficulty. This was still the gift Erick was going to give the platinum dragon, though.
Once Erick was done with that, he went to see so of his ssages gathering by his front gate.
He plucked out the best ssages according to his Lightning Path and rapidly gained another appreciation for the vastness of infinity. Problems abounded; the work was literally never ending.
Erick jotted down the top 103 problems, each of which might incur reson costs from ten thousand resons, to ten billion, or trillion. Erick had no idea. There were several 'reconnect a lost world', like Abarial. There was a major request to 'Please contribute to the resurrection cost line', which was 1000 resons per person, and which usually had a person waiting 10 years before a resurrection. There was 'The Celestial Observatory wishes to speak with you!', which was sothing that Erick would actually be following up with later.
But first, Erick went and knocked on Lionshard's door.
- - - -
Lionshard looked at Erick's gift.
The guy himself had left not an hour ago after a rather nothing-conversation regarding the new sun in the sky and his Reson Gathering spellwork, and after handing over a curated list of problems he wanted his new sun's power directed toward. The list was great. Lionshard thought that Erick was way too soft of a touch, though. If a simple ssage and explanation of a plight was enough to get him to help then…
Well.
He would be drowning in work and burning out way too fast.
Lionshard had tried telling him that he was taking on way too much work for not enough self-benefit, informing him about mana costs and such, and how one sun was not enough to solve any of these problems, but Erick didn't want to hear it. And so, Erick had left, and Lionshard had set up solutions to the problems that Erick had given him, setting the systems of Margleknot to direct resons in those directions…
And now he was here, looking at Erick's gift.
It was a Renew symbol, but for reson generation. It was a LOT better than Lionshard's current conversion rate of 50 Fate mana to 1 Reson, but only if he used Benevolence mana for it, of which he had none. The conversion of Fate to Benevolence was… adequate, as he had explained to Erick. This Reson Gathering did not change the universe at all, but it was certainly a boon for Erick's goals, and Margleknot was certainly already using as much Benevolence as he could, just to get these sa conversion rates.
Lionshard wondered if Margleknot would be changing his publicly available conversion rates anyti soon. Would his 10-to-1 rate beco 9-to-1?
Probably not. Margleknot would simply be getting a bit more efficient, behind the scenes. The system would work marginally better. Margleknot's overall, real conversion rate was 9.97-to-1, and only because certain non-mana powers of his allow him to do that. Maybe his real rate would go to 9.94?
Erick's rate was firmly at 9-to-1, though. He could beco a very successful banker, if he wanted.
Lionshard was both jealous and incredibly happy for Erick.
After extensive testing, and after so proper mana altering and frashifting, Lionshard had managed to eke out an 11 Fate to 1 reson conversion using Erick's machine.
Which was phenonal, for him.
But Margleknot's conversion rate was 10 to 1.
So this didn't actually help him at all.
Lionshard would continue to use Margleknot's banking system. He had explained that to Erick who seed to have taken that news okay, and also so other, odder way. At the ntion of Margleknot's bank, Erick got too chaotic to read. Lionshard let that bit of weird chaos go in order to get back on topic. 'No', Lionshard had explained, 'Thank Margleknot ('Yggdrasil', Lionshard supposed) you have not upset Margleknot (the city) as much as you think you have.'
It was a good thing that Erick hadn't upset the Balance too much…
"But this is touching a fate too large, for sure. And yet, Benevolence is in response to Malevolence, so is this a Balance shift at all? … Yes, it is. Malevolence was never that strong, but Evil has been rather stronger than Good for a long ti. So this was… a good thing?" Lionshard was having trouble reading that particular Fate. "… Whatever the case, people are going to be shifting toward Benevolence cultivation, for sure." Lionshard humd as he inspected his gift. After several minutes, he decided, "This is really too extravagant of a gift. I need to give him sothing better in return… What, though? What could possibly be better than this? This is… A lot of money, as soon as I deign to hire soone to make resons for cheaper with this. I would need to raise soone to power, though that shouldn't be too hard. As for this artifact itself… Well it's archival grade, for sure. I'll have to put it on a pedestal, I think. Where should it go?"
Lionshard humd and thought.
He had been aning to organize the Margleknot archive section anyway. This would be a good new centerpiece? Yes. That worked.
"But what gift to give Erick in return?"
Lionshard thought, and thought, and thought, and eventually Guided Fate toward a good decision for himself.
"Ah. Clothes and food— Or rather fabrics and directions of where to find food he would like. Yes. That's a better idea."
Lionshard opened his ssaging book and found an old standby.
"Hello. I would like to place an order for moonglow, sunglow, darkglow, and lightglow base fabrics, and a wardrobe of suits and various other clothes to fit the new Father of Margleknot… Yes, this is a real order. Yes, this is actually Lionshard calling you— This is still Lighthold's Weavery, yes? I know I called the right number— Sure. I'll hold."
Lionshard frowned a little. Was Lighthold's going downhill? No, surely not. Lionshard would have called soone else if they were. Lighthold's was still one of the best tailors in all of Margleknot, right? Right. When had he ordered clothes from them last, though? … Oh. 3,551 years ago. Ah.
That would explain why they didn't know it was him.
… Maybe he was too much of a hermit—
"Ah! Hello, Lighthold— Oh. You're his son? Oh he passed? Ah. I'm sorry to hear that. 1,500 years ago? Ah. I have been out of current events for a while. My condolences. Can you still do— Ah! You can? Wonderful." Lionshard smiled. "I have a big order for you. Yes, for the new Father of Margleknot. He got a gift and I need to get him one, and I thought of clothes, and I thought of you— Your father, but I look forward to your work, too. So that'll be moonglow and..."
- - - -
Erick stood on the grass of the lands of his property and asked the air, "I have a bank account?"
Words appeared.
You have an account which is only accessible here, in Margleknot. Your current balance is: 0
Current inco: 167b per day
Current expenditures: Max.
Ti till finished:
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