Chapter 175: Endless – Part 1
The levity seems to be over, so after a short mont of silence, Roxanne promptly continues, "Anyway, these robes are really well made." And she points to the inside of the gray robes, which are lined with pretty silver patterns.
Mages use robes lined with mana-conductive material (or made of a mana-conductive material itself) because the cloth can move around, which allows it to adapt its shape to the pattern of a mage's involuntary release of mana as they chant, increasing a spell's efficiency through a positive feedback loop, while plate armor is too stiff to do the sa. This increase in efficiency follows a similar principle to a staff's crystal, which is filled with a material that's magically similar to the type of spell that a mage normally casts, and like boosts like, so since you always release so mana that's already attuned to the spell that you're casting (unless you have 100 in [Mana Efficiency]), every mage benefits from wearing a robe instead of plate.
And the craftsmanship of this robe is at a surprisingly high level.
Item Info
Material
'Unknown type of plant-based fiber; high-purity silver; enchanting gems; plant-based dyes'
Quality
'90 for thread; 98 for silver; average of 98 for the gems; average of 55 for the dyes'
Anomalies
'Silver thread that captures mana and circulates it around the robe, boosting a chanted spell's power'
Enchantnts
'Non-standard [Breeze]; non-standard [Wind Armor]; non-standard [Rainbow Shield]; non-standard [Swift Foot]; non-standard [Fly]; unknown electric enchantnt; unknown enchantnt'
Origin Insights
A masterfully crafted garnt clearly oriented for use in battle. The robe's top is mildly tight-fitting but very elastic, displaying the wearer's body type without significantly hampering the robe's magical boost, while the bottom is loose for better movent and just short enough to not drag against the floor, implying that the creator values effectiveness the most but can't give up completely on appearance. The simple but solemn decorations imply a military origin and possibly even a level of military rank, though their shape could also imply a religious aning. More insights require either very high 'Wisdom' or cultural knowledge about the creator's culture
Indeed, the robe's chest area reminds
of a military dress uniform jacket as it has broad shoulders and a neat, straight look. As for the decorations, it has three black crosses on each shoulder and one over the heart, which would make it easy to recognize the mage's rank without raising a sign that says, "assassinate ; I'm a high-ranking officer." Though, being the sole mage in a sea of tin cans didn't help in that regard.
Unfortunately, we didn't find a "flash and nail HE grenade" in the pockets, but at least we recovered a wand that we can also inspect.
But our rry ti is interrupted as we get worrying news from the Horns.
They breached the tornado, but the first squad to do so was "teleported" to another level without noticing anything. They only realized it even happened because the fellowship bond insisted that they were in a "different, unreachable space," sothing that happens when a party mber is in a different "level" of a dungeon than yours.
If not for the safety [Gate] board, they could've been permanently stranded there, which is exactly why Space mages are so important for dungeon exploration.
But the truly worrying part is how this seems like a trap made by the dungeon. If the Dungeon Master is hostile to explorers, what other dangers can we expect from a being that is kind of like the god of this place?
Even the horns understand this and call off the exploration for now to give us ti to think this through.
Since the inspection got interrupted, Lily suggests we check up on Chesa, and we learn that the rgirl has rested enough to be able to speak properly, so we decide to go to her as she has so explaining to do.
After I give Kaatohe a brief visit to tell her that everyone's fine, we go to Chesa's room in the Carrier.
The pretty and very slender Thalanthro girl sits up the mont we enter. She's wearing a cute set of pink pajama shorts and a top, but her choice of attire seems to cover very little, considering her usual clothes, allowing us to savor her long, light-blue arms and legs and even get a peek at her lacy white panties. But then we notice that she doesn't seem to wear a bra, which is expected since she has literally no tits.
"How are you feeling? You gave us a bit of a scare there," Lily kindly remarks before I can attempt to huskily seduce the girl.
Chesa smiles softly, seemingly not noticing our lecherous stares, and begins spilling everything, "I'm doing fine, just tired. I don't know what exactly happened, but I suddenly felt like I could 'control' the lightning of the javelin, though I couldn't really control it, so I guess that ans that it was through my Gift rather than 'Magic Power.'" Then she giggles girlishly, which is adorable.
But yeah, we expected that explanation.
She isn't done, though, and after a mont of consideration, she quietly adds as she cutely grabs her chin, deep in thought, "But once I let the lightning course through , I felt so full of energy, which was a first, like, seriously, and then starting the storm beca so easy that I just did it."
The only ti the wives and I have experienced sothing like that was when Ciel received a Boon from the God of the Sun and erased an entire encampnt from existence, and we're pretty sure that isn't what happened with Chesa, so we can't really relate to her.
"Well, you guys' Gifts are similar to each other but not mine, so you should know what it's like," I wryly remark with a shrug.
Lily lets out a sigh of relief and hums in agreent, "Yeah, we do. I just wanted to make sure she didn't overexert herself because it sure looks like it's easy to."
Samkelo also hums, but in understanding, and then he explains, "It kind of feels like a muscle that you 'pull,' and then it hurts to use it for a while."
"You, overexerting yourself?" Yunia questions with a scoff, still feeling like his ego is a delightfully squishy target to step on with her pointy heels.
And the gno manchild doesn't seem phased, though he fails to hide a mischievous grin as he reminisces, "What? It was fun to use it at first, so I conjured a bunch of stuff, but I was pretty bad at it, and I ended up 'pulling the muscle.'"
Then Lily rcilessly exposes an embarrassing mont, "You also poisoned yourself trying to conjure weed directly into your blood, or sothing."
He does have the decency to look away in sha, but it barely lasts a second as he owns up to it, "It was edibles, and I conjured them directly into my stomach. But yeah, it's easy to conjure 'partially-magical' matter, which behaves a bit weirdly in your stomach if you don't specifically 'build' the matter to be eaten."
Ciel is reminded of a funny mont, so she kindly shares, "Exactly, it's like eating 'solidified mana.' Dungeons with a the are often made of it because it's a cheap way to mimic matter, and since they also mimic food, basically every new adventurer eats so when they get tired of [Conjure Bland al], so then they soon co running back to the temple because they think they got poisoned." And she gives Aoi and
a pointed look as we ate so sausages during our first delve into the Legado dungeon.
"Technically, it is poison; I can make antidotes for that," Roxanne suddenly chis in.
And the chocolate angel makes a skeptical face. "Yeah, but it's not… poison poison, the bad kind that monsters use. It's just indigestion."
Then the gno turns to the succubus and asks an honest, curious question, "Wait, what exactly is your degree in? I thought you were just a chemist?"
"Alchemist, and I specialize in potions and antidotes," she proudly corrects him after a telepathic prompt from .
His eyebrows rise up, and his mouth widens in a very "Samkelo" grin as he cos up with a stupid idea. "Does she know what weed is? Is there weed in this world? I want to know if there's magical weed."
Alissa suddenly blurts out an innocent question with a cute, confused frown, "We do have weed-…" -then I share a bit of information with her, and her pretty eyes open wide in realization- "and I just realized that 'weed' is slang…"
And this talk unearths so mories from Hana. "Oh, we have that! It's called 'hash'! But it's only common on the Mainland," she happily exclaims and basks in the nostalgia of her mories.
I read her mind, and I'm surprised but also not really that she showed her boobs to so teens in exchange for hash when she was younger.
The gno makes a pensive look as he comnts, "Huh… well, it used to be called 'hash' or 'hashish' on Earth, too."
So I kindly explain, "So words here are the sa as those on Earth, but I believe it's mostly just ancient words."
The Earthlings raise eyebrows at that, but they make no comnt as it seems that none of them share my fondness for etymology.
Then Roxanne chis in too, "Back in Rabanara, I know that the expensive leaf 'cake' or 'bush' used for smoking has hash in it along with other stuff."
And Samkelo's grin returns. "You guys have it good! Can you believe that the Chiras hardly smoke stuff? They like so alcohol and fernted stuff, but aside from that, I only found a psychedelic leaf that you eat."
"We don't do well with psychedelics because of our telepathy," Ciel states and flashes a stiff smile.
Yeah…
"Huh, that sounds fun…" Lily hums curiously.
So I flatly explain, "The last ti we tried that, Aoi accidentally fried herself, Hana, and another person with a fully physical lightning strike."
The Earthlings give the little big blue dragon a surprised look. Then Chesa shyly confesses, "I've done that…" And the girl flashes Aoi a wry smile.
"I ant 'fun,'" Lily corrects herself and makes air quotes.
"Good thing the three of us were all dragons, so it just made us pass out and burned our skin a bit," Hana proudly states.
"A weaker person could've died…" Ciel concernedly adds.
So Hana smugly brags, "A weaker person would've pissed their panties when they saw the storm going on above their head and then ran away before it hit."
But she's kind of right, so Ciel hesitatingly agrees, "That's… fair, I think…"
After that, we leave the Earthlings and return to the room with the bodies so that we can investigate the enchantnts crafted by the pseudo-orcs.
I focus on the wand while Roxanne inspects the robe again and Lina the burnt-up javelin. Yunia will stay with Hihiriwa to oversee the clean-up of the fortress, and Alissa will get soone to repair our airship. Hana, Ciel, and Aoi don't have much to do, so they just gather up the Companions that are still willing to fight, then go help the rest of the Lordsguard with the golems watching their backs.
The wand can cast [Fire Arrow], [Lightning Bolt], and [Telekinesis]. Pretty standard stuff, but the way it does it isn't standard. System spells all have a similar structure, where they use five distinct "phases": gathering, conversion, building, expulsion, and trigger.
In a standard [Fire Arrow], you'd first gather mana in your heart because your blood is the most mana-attuned part of your body, and though the mana cos from your mana organ, it actually physically manifests anywhere in your body. So it makes sense to gather mana in your heart, right? It does, and that's the standard way that most system magic is cast, but it's different for enchanting. Not only is it simpler to make an enchantnt that gathers the mana inside the gem, but they're also already attuned to the type of spell being cast, making it more efficient to gather the mana in them.
But the pseudo-orc's wand doesn't do either of those thods. It gathers the mana in the caster's body, and it does so in the head. There are so benefits of gathering mana in that area (if you ignore the higher chance of getting a headache), like the spell being boosted by ntal "Stats" like "Wisdom," "Intelligence," and "Willpower," but unless it's a high-level spell, the "boost" isn't that noticeable compared to the higher efficiency of gathering the mana in your heart. But [Fire Arrow] is a level 10 [Fire Magic] spell, so what the fuck is the purpose of having a gem gather mana in your head?
It's not just the wand's enchantnts that do this; the ones in the robe also gather the mana in your head. It's just such an odd choice that it puzzles us. And now I feel like I should've captured the mage instead of killing him, but he was a pretty dangerous one, so the feeling is fleeting.
"Okay, but this is even more puzzling," Roxanne remarks as she inspects the gem sewn into the robe's hood (which has been deep [Clean]ed of blood and brain matter).
We give her curious looks, and she feeds the enchantnt so mana. After a second, a black sphere appears in front of the hood, right where the mage's face would be, and the sphere is definitely made with the monster version of [Illusion Magic]. Then we sense another magical spell being cast, this ti inside the gem in the hood, and it feels very… [Space Magic]-y.
"Hmm…!" I hum in sudden interest.
Trying to unveil the inner workings of a spell is like solving a puzzle. You can't really "look into" spells you haven't cast yourself, but there are many ways you can get "insights" into its inner workings.
Sensing the mana it exudes only gives you a "hint" of what it might be, an idea of the "intent" behind the spell, like how [Abyssal Fire] gives so eldritch vibes as it's a fire that consus everything, but it doesn't work as well with purely physics-based spells, like a simple [Fireball].
This spell is the latter as the [Illusion Magic] bit gives the feeling of a "gathering light" (as in photons), while the [Space Magic] thing going on inside the gem is more like an [Eternal Gate]. This is so interesting… but then there's a very obvious question that I must ask.
Is this spell a fucking remote cara?
It's technically possible to interrupt any spell, not just the ranged area of effect type. It's just that it's extrely difficult to do so unless you're literally hugging the mage and trying to overpower their "Magic Power" with yours, and even then, your MPower has to be much higher than theirs. But there's none of that here, and it's safe to use [Redirect Mana] to steal the enchantnt's mana, allowing
to better sense its "flavor."
And so, I do both.
First, I interrupt the black sphere, giving
the sensation that I've "broken" sothing and also that I've "plugged a drain," returning reality back to normal. Then the mana from the sphere hits , and I sense that the sphere isn't just about "photons"; there's, like, a whole "recreation" aspect to it. The sphere might not be just a "cara." It could even be a whole damn 3D hologram of the area around it, and who's to say how "big" that area might be?
Then I interrupt the [Space Magic]-y spell inside the gem, and I sense that I've "broken a window," but instead of opening a hole to sothing, I've actually closed it, sohow. The mana from it hits
next, and I feel like it's basically the sa shit as an [Eternal Gate], but… lighter…?
Goddamn, this is so vague. I get such… random sensations that I can barely find the words to describe them.
And Roxanne remarks with a shrug, "That's magic. If the spell has even just a small amount of complexity, all you'll get is a vague idea of what's going on because of how deeply an area needs to be altered for sothing as simple as a [Fireball] to be able to exist."
Right, spells are basically violations of the laws of reality… but are these "laws" actually sothing written? Can I quantify how many laws a spell breaks? Can I asure them in any way?
Roxanne raises her thin black eyebrow high on her unnaturally pale forehead, but this is right at the edge of her magical knowledge. "That's the mana cost. The more 'laws' you 'break,' the more expensive the spell is," she explains a bit hesitantly.
And I frown pensively as I deliberate, "Still can't really quantify the laws, though I guess we could make so equations to predict the mana cost based on 'Stats' and skill level."
"Ew… [Math]," the lazy succubus moans in disgust.
And Lina actually raises her head to give her the stink-eye.
But then my gloomy loli turns it towards
and makes a request, "I prefer 'glare' because 'stink eye' sounds disgusting. Nothing about
should be 'stinky.'"
"As you wish, my love," I huskily agree.
Roxanne flashes a warm smile at us, then continues with a more sober tone, "Anyway, now that we're talking about it, I think I've heard about an encyclopedia of 'mana use efficiency,' or sothing like that, which lists every individual alteration of reality that the system spells use and their mana cost."
I hum thoughtfully, but then I just shrug. "Would be interesting to read, but not exactly useful for anything I want to do."
Then we turn our attention back to the robes and begin investigating the unknown electric enchantnt, but we easily determine that it's the sa [Electric Shield] that the Hippogryph riders had, though Aoi suddenly feels interested in it as she has a passing interest in electricity. She's in battle, though, so she finishes eating her pseudo-orc and goes for the next.
Lina's investigation takes longer as she can't just feed mana into the gem at random since the "circuits" are broken and so dangerous stuff could leak out, which has a small chance of starting a Runaway Mana Reaction, and we don't want that because it's very explode-y. What she does instead is identify the "components," which are voids inside the gem where the walls have been attuned to a type of mana called "code."
This isn't like programming with computers; it's more like a "symbol" that evokes certain mories for the enchanter, helping them infuse their will into the mana that they release onto the walls of the void, attuning them to the "code." The enchanter's "will" is so strongly infused into the area that it now converts and manipulates any mana that cos near it just like a mage would, allowing non-mages to cast spells just by feeding mana into the gem.
Enchanting "code" is learned through entering a trance by repeating mantras so intensely that it becos ingrained within your mind, and then you just need to rember the "symbol" to trigger the trance again. It's similar to how [Alteration Magic] requires absolute concentration, but enchanting has a much greater margin for error since you're only dealing with the highly reactive particle that is mana instead of real matter, which is naturally resistant to being altered through magic.
So Lina has to find these "components" and either: create channels in the gem so that she can send mana into the components and only the components, or open up the gem and try to sense the "flavor" of the attuned area just like I do with [Sense Mana]. The forr is riskier but easier to analyze, while the latter is completely safe but harder to draw concrete information from.
She does the latter first, and then the forr if she deems the component safe enough, but there are quite a number of them, so it takes a while to go through each one. The enchantnts aren't particularly complex, though, so she eventually manages to reach a conclusion.
The javelin's main purpose was to contain large amounts of their unique "angry" magical electricity and then release it all in a very chaotic way to best use its specialty "wild" aspect to cause as much destruction as possible.
Quite the interesting use of magic, I must say.
Announcent
Hall of Fa of Patrons
The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their nas sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their nas are:
Prince PreownedFIN.
Prince Owldente.
Lord Andrew yers.
Lord Bakerdea.
Lord Maurice.
Lord Mattirro Draca.
Lord Tenebris Lupus.
Lord Paul Daval.
Lord Paul Daval.
Lord Tmac.
Lord CopeyDunt.
Lord BlindTactic.
Lord Philip.
Lord d3235.
Lord SubJef.
Lord GalacticTNT.
Lord FrostyCube.
Lord Glaistig Uaine.
Lord School work.
Lord Beater.
Lord patrick__starz.
Lord Peter Kraushuber
Lord David England.
Lord Cidant.
Lord Marwin33.
Lord ti Campbell.
Noble Aclys.
Noble Carl
Baxter.
Noble Tony Starrk.
Noble DND.
Noble Anon A Moose.
Noble warmoger55.
Reviews
All reviews (0)