Roughly ten minutes after I had bought the pair of ores, Ryone suddenly appeared in my room. In the manner that she loves to manipulate the Admin Room, she simply appeared from thin air. Her face seed sowhat tired, making think that she had just returned from having descended down to the world. “Dale! I found it!”
Judging by the wide grin on her face, I knew ‘it’ was sothing important. “Found… what?” That still didn’t stop from asking what it ant, though! The pronoun ga shall not be played today!
Ryone blinked in confusion, but then seed to realize that I had no way to read her mind, and that I hadn’t been spying on her to figure out what she was up to. “I found the next level of enchanting. It’s one of the key requirents to build the inventory system we bought.”
“Ohh.” I nodded, understanding why she was so excited. For Ryone, this must seem like a major breakthrough indeed. “So, what is it?”
The elven goddess took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down before she began to explain. “It’s three dinsions. I figured out two different ways to do it, though they have different results. The first is to make a sphere, and carve the enchantnt diagram on the bottom, with the pattern mirrored at the top so that they et in the middle. Then you put the enchanting object inside.”
“This seems to work best to slightly increase the efficiency of enchantnts, but the increase isn’t by much. The main thod is a shape with hard sides, like a pyramid or cube. Then, carve an enchantnt pattern into each side. Doing it this way lets you vastly increase the number of enchantnts you can apply to the sa item. Though, naturally that makes each enchantnt weaker.”
I let her finish explaining before I gave a nod. I was much calr about this discovery than she seed to be. “Okay… What about how to make enchantnts triggered? For instance, voice activation or specific actions?”
Ryone raised a finger as if she was about to give a further explanation, and then paused for a long mont, slowly lowering that sa finger. “I… haven’t figured that part out yet. But this is still a major discovery! It’s a big step towards getting advanced enchantnts!” She declared, as if pleading her case.
I gave a slight chuckle, again nodding my head. “I know, I know. Listen, Tubrock is going to be working on making godly items for everyone. I’d like you to help him with the enchanting side of it. You might even be able to learn sothing by working with him on this. For instance, what happens if you enchant the raw ore before it is refined? Or the bars before they are made into items?”
As I gave these suggestions, Ryone’s eyes seed to light up. She seed like she was going to leave imdiately, but before she could I stopped her. “Don’t go just yet, I have a question for her.” I could see an impatient look on her face right away, as if urging to get on with it so that she could go conduct more research. “How much do you know about the use of divine energy?”
Ryone’s face went blank for a mont in confusion, seeming surprised that I had asked that. “You an, how we send it to our priests?”
“No, I an the raw use of divine energy. I think soone unlocked the cleric class, because I can suddenly use that energy myself.”
When I said that, Ryone furrowed her brows together. “I can’t help you there. A god’s divine energy is naturally attuned to a specific set of domains, which limit their powers. I’ve never gone out of my way to force my divine energy to do sothing it shouldn’t, because of the implied cost.”
“I see… You can go et Tubrock now. Be sure to let know if either of you need anything.” As soon as I said that, Ryone gave an eager nod, vanishing into a black mist that dispersed into the air. The mist was a new touch to her transportation…
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In the plains surrounding Try’s Hold, a large herd of centaurs were gathering. Among them, there were only the normal breed, not a single variant. This was not unusual, as the variants were still much less common than a normal centaur. This particular herd was composed of nearly fifty, all of whom were ard with stone spears or wooden bows.
One among the crowd seed to be arguing with the rest. A young centaur who had just turned of age a few moons ago. “Please, there must be another way.” He begged, looking to the older mbers of the herd for assistance. “This can’t be the answer.”
“This is the only answer.” The eldest says, his hair starting to gray. He walked unsteadily on his four legs, clearly showing his age. A scar crossed the right side of his chest, a wound from an earlier battle. “They are an abomination to our people and our god.”
“Greymane.” The youngling pleaded, looking to the elder that spoke. Greymane was not the man’s na, but a title he earned for living as long as he had. “How can they be an abomination to our god? You’ve heard the stories! Tryval once stood with the ‘cursed’, sheltering them.”
“Silence, boy!” The elder snarled out, reaching for his bow. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Those are just stories made up by them to buy acceptance.” As he spoke, he grabbed a single arrow from the quiver on his back. “They preach of following Tryval’s teachings, to accept one another, yet they hide in their walls to disguise their sha.”
The boy wanted to continue talking, but he saw that the greymane was nocking the arrow on the bow, clearly intent on attacking him if he did not stand down. “I can’t agree to this.” He said simply, turning his body away. “I will follow the teachings. The plains are my ho, and its people are my people.” As he spoke, he began to trot away. Not in the direction of the nearby city, but out into the open plains. He refused to look back, to choose either side in the coming battle.
“At least one knows.” A quiet voice seed to be carried on the wind. The remaining centaurs all quickly turned to find a new person standing only a dozen ters from them. His blonde hair flowed down his back, his muscular body untainted by scar or dirt.
“Who are you?” The greymane asked, his hands still holding the bow and arrow. He had co too far and prepared too much for this attack to let it be ruined by an outsider.
“Nobody important.” The man spoke in a solemn voice, his steps slowly advancing. In his eyes could be found a trace of sorrow, and reluctance.
Seeing that the newcor had no intention of identifying themselves or leaving, the greymane pulled his bowstring back, aiming at the man’s human heart. “Forgive , Tryval, for what I must do for your people.” As he finished his prayer, he let the arrow loose from the bow, watching as it flew straight towards its target.
However, it was dood to never hit. Just before the arrow arrived, he seed to disappear, crossing the entire distance in a mont. “No.” He looked to the greymane, his hands covered in blood. Suddenly, two of the closest centaurs fell sideways to the ground, their heavy bodies crashing down. Each of them had two gaping wounds in their bodies. One was located at the left side of their human torso, while the other was at the front of their horse underbelly. The locations of the two hearts of a centaur.
“Kill him!” The greymane shouted, causing the others to all rush towards him. n, won, even so smaller ones like the centaur that left earlier charged to the man. Arrows flew, spears were thrust, but the man simply stood there.
“I’m sorry.” He said in a small voice, his figure once again vanishing to appear in front of the greymane. This ti, the blood covered all the way to his shoulders, and one of his hands were sticking through the greymane’s chest. “I can’t let you start a war. If they did it, I would do the sa.”
As his voice fell, nothing answered him but the crashing of bodies. Every centaur that had gathered for this raid, regardless of age or gender, now littered the field. Like before, each had a pair of identical wounds on their bodies. For a centaur, losing one heart was crippling, but not lethal. They still had a chance to maintain their bodily functions to a degree. Losing both hearts or the head guaranteed an instant death. Instant, and painless.
Faint tears trickled down the man’s face as he released the greymane, who similarly crashed into the ground. For seemingly no reason, he turned his head to look at the sky. “I guess I have to leave for a while, now.”
Without removing the gore from his arms, he turned to walk off into the distance, nobody left to see his departure. So hours later, a herd would pass over the area, concerned by the bloodstains littering the ground. By then, the bodies would have long since been lost, moved to a place where they could not cause trouble for either side. But, this was not a true solution. Whether it was the variants in Tryval’s Hold, or the centaurs that wandered the plains, tensions were rising.
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“Hey Dale.” I turned and saw Terra greeting as I sat on the couch in the living room of the Admin Room, not feeling the desire to do… well, anything really.
“Hey. Finally got Udona settled in?” I asked, only to see a trace of guilt crossing her face.
“Not… quite. I had to tell her a harsh truth, and she’ll probably need a couple days before she is ready to see anyone. But, Bihena said you were looking for ?” She smiled sadly, moving to sit next to on the couch, leaning her body against and holding close.
“Yeah… Is there sothing you need to talk about?” Right now, she looked like soone desperate for a friend. My curiosity could wait until that was taken care of.
“It’s… The system can be a real jerk at tis, you know?” She looked up to , her eyes slightly watering. “You wanted her to be our sister, so that’s what it gave her. mories of , her, Keliope, and Accalia growing up together. Always alone, depending on each other. She had never known anyone besides the three of us, and in her mind the other two were already awoken.”
Terra gave a slight sniff, bringing a hand up to wipe her eyes. “And I had to tell her that none of that was real. That it was just sothing the system gave her to set a personality. That I had never spoken with her before today, and that her other two sisters had never said a word to anyone since their birth.”
I reached up, gently rubbing her back as I listened to her. “I’m sorry… I didn’t know that it would do sothing like that when I asked your permission. I thought it’d end up like any of the other gods.”
Terra nodded her head slightly. “I know, Dale. I don’t bla you. If I knew, I wouldn’t have agreed to it. But… I had to tell her. Otherwise, she would have hated all of us once she found the truth out herself. At least this way, there’s sothing left to salvage.”
I gave another nod, still rubbing her back. “Do you need to talk about it more?” It was obvious that doing this hurt her, and the fact that she might have to do the sa thing two more tis didn’t make it better.
“Just… let stay like this for now.” She buried her head in my shoulder, speaking with a weaker voice than I had ever heard from her. In this kind of circumstance, I really couldn’t deny her this, so I let her silently cry against for as long as she wanted. My questions could wait a little while longer.
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