Ar'Kendrithyst

Erick sat still for a moment, there in his chair in the library. He thought about what had happened. He had seen some bad situations in his day, but his visit to Candlepoint had affected him in some deep kinda way.

… He would likely ask himself if everything he had seen was a part of some sort of agenda for a long, long time to come. But for now, he would do what his heart told him to do.

He looked over to Poi, and thought at the man.

Poi said, “If they’re less desperate, then they’ll likely be less willing to follow whatever evil voice rises up in their midst. That place is rife for some unkind influence to take control of the entire place, and they’re already all loyal to the Shades.”

“Yeah… That’s what I thought, too.” Erick asked, “What did Kiri manage to find?”

“She’s off looking after your other request, now.” Poi said, “You’re not going to find much, though. Widespread rad collection is the bane of most archmages.”

“That’s what I heard, too.” Erick asked, “What is a rad, Poi?”

“A collection of mana.” Poi shrugged. “Don’t know what else to say.”

“I’m probably going to have to attach some sort of collection spell to [Domain of the Withering Slime]. But that would make it a tier 5.” Erick turned his attention inward as he glanced at his Status. He only had 7 points available. “I need to invent a few more Basic Spells to get that option, though.” He added, “Or I could try to get above tier 6. My [Endless Plasma Wrap] is only tier 6, and that’s the highest I have… Creating a tier 7, 8, and 9, would be 21 more points. Or I could reinvent some Basic Spells… I wonder how [Force Bolt] came to be...”

Erick thought for a moment longer, and then he acted. Six Ophiels popped out of the air at Erick’s discretion. He sent one of them blipping into his gardening room, to pick up a box of Erick Beans and a container of rice, ready for planting—

He paused. He asked Poi, “Is there going to be a problem with giving food aid to the shadelings of Candlepoint?”

Poi said, “Yes. Not from me, though. Even if their suffering is a ploy, allowing people to suffer is still wrong.”

“… Will it be a problem I can’t handle?”

“No idea, sir.” Poi said, “I have no idea how this is going to play out, but I won’t go there in person, and you should never go, either. No one you care about should ever have any contact with a shadeling, and you should treat this as playing along with their ploy, for now, with the full intention of backstabbing them when they show who they are.”

Erick sighed, “Yeah...”

With a mental push, Erick sent his Ophiel and their stash of seeds out into an unimportant part of the Crystal Forest, a mere 570 kilometers away to the south east. The sky was full dark, with stars twinkling above. The moons washed the land in silver. He sat back in his chair again, as he guided his [Familiar]s to first hover high into the sky, and then light up that part of the desert with bright, full spectrum spotlights.

Crystal Mimics on the ground immediately noticed the lights. They jerked active for a few small moments, but they quickly resumed their attempts at hiding in plain sight when nothing else happened.

Next, came a [Cascade Imaging] set up in the middle of the Erick’s future project. He let that run, searching for ‘people’, hoping he would find none. And then he went to work, clearing out the mimics and working over the land.

What took Erick a good hour to make was a basic garden of three rings. It was perfectly circular and about a kilometer across, with a tall, outer wall, five meters high and a meter wide. The next section of the garden was a portion of land filled with stone spikes, that beans would vine upon. The center of the circular garden was a flat, clay and loam basin that would soon be growing rice.

This land wasn’t the best for growing anything. The plants Erick planned to grow would likely start dying as soon as Erick stopped supporting the area. But by that time, something else would likely happen, and maybe the shadelings wouldn’t need this project. Or maybe he could make something closer to them, and they could harvest what he grew for them, instead of him doing the whole job.

Eh. It’s not like it would be a hard job. He had a lot of tricks up his sleeve to help him grow what he wanted to grow. It was just beans and rice, after all. He could even use that spell he made a long while ago, [Gravity Strainer].

Gravity Strainer, instant, medium range, 65 mana, 1 hour duration.

Conjure a large, freely moldable space where specific objects turn near-weightless and fall to a designated point.

He’d have to cast it a few… five hundred times, around the place, and it wouldn’t last very long, but he could designate ‘beans’ and ‘rice’ and those would get pulled upward. Ophiel could then go around and use his Handy Aura to clip the produce off the plants, sending them to gathering points in the air above.

It should work.

Erick set nine Ophiel to work, planting the small amount of his beans and rice into their respective locations. His reserves didn’t account for much coverage. He’d have to grow and replant a dozen times before the land was filled with green vines, and the basin held enough water to plant the rice.

So he did just that.

Glowing rain came down all across the orange land, while Ophiels waited in eight Restful [Prismatic Ward]s, evenly placed around the walls, with one in the center, on a three meter tall tower of stone. The Ophiel in the center sang a song of violins and growth, as he poured out platinum from the sky.

Green vines sprouted, twirling up around stone trellises, under the watchful eyes of Ophiel, and Erick. When pods started to sprout, Erick cut the rain, and Ophiels descended upon the new harvest with careful, yet quick telekinetic hands. They plucked open bean pods and scattered the white seeds everywhere.

The second platinum rain brought a whole lot more beans than the first, and actually began to fill up the basin in the center. But this second iteration was not enough to cover even a tenth of the cleared land.

Erick repeated the process a few more times. After the third iteration, the basin had enough water in it to support the rice, so Erick planted rice, and started to spread those golden grains out across the basin when they started to sprout up from the platinum waters.

He quickly decided that there was no need to keep the vines clean and orderly, or to keep the rice orderly, either.

With his [Gravity Strainer]s set up across the whole of the space, golden grains and green bean pods began reaching for the night sky, and the spotlights above. Ophiels all around the garden began to carefully pluck the produce, sending it up into the air, to collect together. They took breaks in their own [Prismatic Ward]s when needed, for Erick only directed them how to do their assigned tasks once, and then they were on their own, each of them performing their duty perfectly, using their own mana.

Plants were damaged in the process, but [Gravity Strainer] mostly separated leaves and stems from bean pods and rice. Those leaves and stems fell back to the ground, or into the water, where churning, growing vines and rapidly multiplying water plants, quickly overtook the debris.

Erick left nine Ophiel to their tasks, but took direct control of the last one, to collect the creations of his garden. For now, he would store the goods beside his house. So he [Stoneshape]d two stone silos next to his house. They were average sized rooms, but he would likely have to make them larger in order to fit the results of his experiment. But that was okay.

With a [Teleporting Platform], and moving as quickly as Ophiel could, Erick gathered the raw goods and teleported them into those stone rooms. A hundred kilograms of raw rice here. A hundred kilos of beans there. Now two hundred kilos of each. Now more. And then even more. Faster and faster it came. The variety of produce was dearly lacking, but beans and rice was a complete meal, and there was a lot of it. Before long, Erick had to take a break alongside his Ophiel. He had actually run out of mana [Teleport]ing back and forth.

He canceled the rain over the garden and set his Ophiel to harvest what was left. The two buildings he made were full, so he built a third, then a fourth. There was about as much beans as there was rice, but both would need to be shelled and threshed before they were edible. That would cut down on the size of the harvest by a lot.

Two stone silos was still more than enough to feed a lot of people for quite a while, though.

Erick cast four specialized drying and preservation [Ward]s into the stone rooms, and then sealed them, save for holes at the top to let out moisture. He had barely ever used those preservation [Ward]s, but they were very necessary, since he had put the grain away wet. Normally, this was a major no-no. But it wouldn’t rot in a single day. By tomorrow, it should be ready to shell and thresh, but Erick had never done that before. He decided he would have to ask a few people on the Community Gardening Council for some tips. Tomorrow, though.

He came back to himself on his chair in the library, and smiled.

Teressa was on the other side of the room, reading a book. She noticed his return and smiled, as she asked, “Did you finish?” She gestured to the table beside him, saying, “Kiri found some of what you wanted.”

“The goods should be ready for preparation in twelve hours.” Erick picked up the note sitting atop four different books. He read it, then said, “No real way to SLR gather rads, eh?” He looked to the books. The one on top was the smallest one, the most promising, and on loan from Sirocco. He picked it up, and read the title. ‘Summoning Rads: a guide to automatic gathering magics’. He smiled a little, then muttered, “Summoning magic is one way, I guess.” He looked to the other books, leafing through them a little, then asked, “Do you know anything about what happens if a monster eats rads, Teressa? Kiri’s note says nothing really happens.”

“Don’t know much.” Teressa said, “I do know that wyrms eat everything and generally get stronger and crazier when they eat enough rads.”

Erick set the books back down. “I’ll read that in the morning.” He got up, and with one of two remaining Ophiels on his shoulder, said, “Good night, Teressa.”

“Night, Boss.”

- - - -

Erick’s other remaining Ophiel remained stationed in the center of the garden with the lights turned off, sitting on the stump that rose above the basin, under a nearly full strength [Prismatic Ward]. Casting that dense air had nearly cost him his full mana pool and therefore his body, but that was fine. Ophiel loved being out in the open air, even at night in the cold, cold air, and besides, he recovered his strength under that dense air when needed. This was open country, where the wind blew hard and the stars shone bright as the moons and agave outside of the garden walls glittered with reflected light. Occasionally, Ophiel returned to the vine-filled, messy garden to check for anything out of place, but nothing appeared, and nothing happened.

When the sun came up, the chill wind turned to a warm breeze. Flying at night was nice, but Ophiel much preferred less frost in his flights. As the sun reached up from the eastern horizon, and heat returned to the Crystal Forest, Ophiel played in the warm breeze above a land of tangled green vines, and a drying lake basin.

- - - -

Erick tried not to shout as he gestured toward his silos of foodstuffs, saying, “It’s so that they don’t get radicalized by their Shade overlords and prompted into war! I am perfectly aware of the dangers of dealing with them. I’m not ever going to meet them in person!”

Hours ago, morning dawned, and Erick had gone out to see what to make of his haul. The rice was great, but still in husks, and the beans were still in pods. Both had dried out considerably due to the drying [Ward]s he put up last night, so that was good. The rice turned flaky in his hands, revealing white grains under golden husks, while the beans were almost popping out of their dried brown shells on their own. They were definitely ready for the next part of the preparation process. Technically, he could give this haul to Justine as-is, but that seemed cheap, somehow. Especially when he was perfectly capable of giving them a finished product.

Maybe he would even move this whole operation next to Candlepoint, and let them do almost everything, except for the necessity of the rains, or course. He would ask for darkchips to keep up the appearances of doing this for his own greed, but if they let him, he would do this for free. Seeing a city full of hungry people was not something Erick could walk away from, or ignore.

Solving the rad-sustenance problem would come later. Giving them a hand up instead of a hand out would also come later. Right now they were dying of desperation, and that was intolerable.

So he went to speak to Kip, the bluemetal wrought who worked the rice fields in the Garden, to ask for some help threshing and shelling, with whatever machines they used. Kip seemed wary at first, and then helpful, and then downright antagonistic, when Erick told Kip the full story of why he needed threshing help.

From there, things spiraled out of control rather fast.

And now, standing on the bare orange rock outside of his house, next to his poor man’s silos of grain and beans, Erick felt like he was facing an immortal wrought firing squad. Three different people were all telling him he was doing the wrong thing, while only one person seemed to be on the fence.

Kip said, “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” He rounded on Erick, saying, “They’re taking you for a long walk down a short tunnel. You know that right? Or maybe you don’t!”

Killzone loomed, saying, “I don’t like it. I don’t think you should do this. Not only are you empowering what is assuredly an enemy, but you are weakening your own resolve against what must come later.”

Erick scowled, saying, “I assure you, that I am perfectly aware of the necessity of what must come.”

“Are you?” Anhelia, full of anger, said, “You are too kind, Erick. They are using you. I’ve seen it before. I will see it again. And you. Are. Being. Used.” She turned to Silverite, demanding, “Talk him out of this!”

Silverite was the only hope Erick had, as she was the only one who did not immediately pounce on Erick’s idea as foolish. But now, as her thin lips turned to a frown, that little hope began to shrivel and die on the vine.

Silverite looked directly at him, and said, “Erick. I understand your compulsion to help.” She glanced over to Poi, adding, “And since this compulsion is not magical, I was willing to hear you out. Here is my conclusion: You are cleared for helping Candlepoi—”

Kip shouted, “FUCKING SLAG, Silverite! You cannot be serious!”

Anhelia said, “I agree with Kipernikus. This is too foolish to even entertain.”

“It’s not too foolish! I’m perfectly aware of the depravity of the Shades,” Erick said.

Anhelia rounded on him, eyes wide and anger drawing her face into heavy lines. She almost shoved a pointed iron finger at his chest. But she stopped. She did not say anything. She shook her finger in barely checked rage. In a second, she forced herself to calm, dropping her hand to her side. She said, “All that you think you know is second hand knowledge, but this action will ensure that the Shades give you first hand knowledge.”

Erick said, “I know that Ar’Kendrithyst deserves total destruction.”

Anhelia scoffed a laugh, then turned away to hide the hurt in her eyes. For all their metallic nature, wrought certainly wore their emotions openly, sometimes.

Erick waited for someone else to say something.

“What are your thoughts, Silverite?” Killzone asked.

They all turned to her, as Silverite’s next words came telepathically, ‘They don’t have [Cleanse], but they could easily hire someone to [Cleanse] their food for them. Maybe they won’t. Maybe, we can make them dependent on Erick for food, and if they get uppity, we send them toxic goods. It would be easy enough to create a bean or a rice that would kill a shadeling.’

They all looked to Erick, as Erick had a minor breakdown.

Could he do that? Could he poison people?

Holy shit!

He would have to, wouldn’t he?

He sent, ‘Okay.’

Anhelia brightened, then shoved her emotions back below the surface. Kip looked unconvinced. Killzone simply nodded, while Silverite stood impassively.

Erick pushed his luck. “What about me feeding them rads, too?”

The reaction he got was unexpected.

Anhelia said, “Yes. Do this.” She added, “If they remain monsters with rads in them, they will be much easier to pick out of society when necessary. If they start discarding their shadeling status, they could be worse than Hunters.”

Erick recoiled in disgust. He hadn’t even considered that angle. He almost changed his mind about helping them with food. But. No. He held firm. The shadelings would get their food… And their rads, too. And if they turned into betrayers Erick would…

Erick didn’t finish that thought.

Killzone said, “Monsters who overeat rads doom themselves to a messy death. So them asking for rads is not a big deal on the surface. The danger of giving them rads is that you are interacting with evil, and it will pull you under when it gets a chance.”

Silverite said, “They also use those rads to get levels, so. It’s not a non-issue, but it’s close.”

Anhelia said, dismissively, “They’re capping out at around level 55, so that’s fine. Let them limit themselves.”

“What?” Erick asked. “What are you talking about?”

Silverite said, “Monsters gain experience differently than people. There have been many theories on the subject for a long time, but finding monsters that speak is a rarity, so all we’ve really had is observational data. Like how mimics are almost always level 30 or 31. Candlepoint is a wealth of information about Melemizargo’s forces that we’ve never known before. Almost every shadeling is somewhere between level 35 to 55.”

“You’re not the only archmage to visit that place, Erick,” Anhelia said, the venom of her voice barely hidden. “Some of them have been working to understand the enemy. Not feed them.” She winced at her own words, and turned away, saying, “I’ve had enough. Apologies, all. I can’t do this.” She walked away, her iron feet tapping hard on the orange stone as she left.

Killzone watched her go for a short moment, then turned back to Erick, saying, “I don’t think you know what you’re doing, but a lot of us are scrambling for answers right now. Maybe you’ll find some, without them duping you into some wrongheaded action.” He glanced to Silverite, saying, “I’ve got to go.”

Silverite nodded. Killzone blipped away in a black flash.

Kip said, “Fine. I guess we’re doing this. I got threshers you can use. Today only, though!” He glared at Erick, adding, “They need to get their own threshers. And you need to not help them so much. A little help is fine; it’s the…” He angrily said, “I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to do, but we’re doing it, by Rozeta. I guess we’re doing it. I’ll be right back.” He flickered blue; blipping away.

Silverite and Erick, and Poi, remained.

Silverite asked, “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I feel for them.” Erick said, “And more importantly: No one should be born into a position where everyone is out to kill you, or thinks you’re a threat. They will become our worst fears because that is the only route they have left for themselves.”

“I can see how you would think that statement is valid. In most cases, it is. But not here. Not now. Not when it comes to Shades.” Silverite said, “So I will say this: Never appear to them in person. Never accept gifts without thorough vetting. I’d tell you to never make bargains, but that ship has sailed. And beware that the rest of the world might see this as aiding the enemy.” She stared at him, saying, “And now, I will impart unto you the wisdom we impart to every soldier who takes a tour of duty in Ar’Kendrithyst: never, ever, speak highly or lowly or about anything or anyone you might encounter out there. The Shades and their ilk will twist your sights and beguile your emotions. They will make you feel they are innocent of the killings they have done and caused. But not everyone who is dealt a poor fate in this world turns into a maniacal murderer, or a monster. They chose to become Shades. They chose the Darkness. You are not their savior. You are not a hero. You are a watchdog of civilization, here to ensure the Darkness remains controlled, and to bark loudly when it ventures out of bounds.”

Erick felt Silverite’s words as much as he heard them, especially that part about being dealt a poor fate. He had said basically the same thing to Bulgan.

Erick said, “I understand. I may not have the same history as you and yours, but I understand.”

Silverite looked at Erick for a moment, then said, “Okay. I trust you. Don’t get suckered into doing something you don’t want—”

A patch of air the size of a small car blipped blue, five meters away. Kip had come back and brought with him a metal box with cranks and gears and hoppers and funnels.

Silverite finished, “Don’t let them orchestrate how you move, Erick. That’s the first step to finding yourself plummeting to your death.” She smirked, looking back at his silos, saying, “And don’t use stone from the ground to build structures. If everyone did that, then Spur would be full of holes. Get some stone from outside, and good luck.” And then she flashed silver, and was gone.

Kip called out, “Let’s get this thing done!” He asked, “You got [Control Item]?”

“I do,” Erick said, walking closer to Kip. “Never really used it before, though.”

Kip tapped his blue metal, dragonkin claws against the thresher, saying, “It’s easy enough.” He pointed to a complicated set of toothed gears, saying, “See this gear, here? All you gotta do is...”

After a few explanations and demonstrations, Kip left Erick with his machine. It was a heavy duty thing, weighing in at two tons of mostly solid metal. It was almost impossible to break, even with a poor application of [Control Item]. Erick still managed to break it, though. After a few [Mend]s and a few more tries to get it all right, white beans began pouring out one funnel, while dried, brown shells came flying out of the other.

All the machine really did was bounce around the dried bean pods and then use a strong fan to blow away the shells. It was simple, and it was effective. It only took two hours to get through the beans.

Erick packaged them in meter wide stone boxes, [Stoneshape]d out of sand from outside the city. It wasn’t like he was unaware of Spur’s ban on using the ground to make buildings. He just didn’t consider that fact last night. When he was done with the bean silos, he dropped them back into the stone underfoot, without issue.

Dealing with the rice took a half hour setting and resetting the machine to the ‘rice’ setting, and then two more hours to get through all of his stock.

When he was done, he stepped back. He had seen what he was producing, well before now, but the amount of goods still stunned a little. After threshing, two silos of rice became one silo, which was still a good 25-ish cubic meters of rice. It was about the same for the beans.

Erick’s [Teleporting Platform] could support around five tons, according to his other experiments. But it could only support six stone boxes. Meaning he had about 41 or 42 tons of produce.

He did not expect nearly that much of a haul. But this was good, wasn’t it? He placed the goods under cool and dry temperature [Ward]s, and let them sit out in the sun, for now.

When he was done, it was just past noon, and he was ready for lunch. Kiri had gotten sandwiches from ‘Meat! Bread! Cheese!’ and they were delicious. Erick almost wondered after sources of meat for the shadelings of Candlepoint, but that was way too much assistance. Erick was already digging himself in deep; he would try to go no further.

He wouldn’t deliver the goods until this evening, either. He would only visit Candlepoint at sunrise or sunset. His few moments of being out after full dark had been more than enough to warn him away from trying the city during the ‘dangerous’ hours. He wouldn’t be harmed himself, since he would be riding Ophiel, but anyone he interacted with might suffer because of his presence.

Before he would do that, though, he went to his library, and with Kiri’s help, decided on a plan for automatic rad gathering.

- - - -

He found a decent enough spell:

[Conjure Force Elemental] + [Telekinesis] + [Stoneshape] + Mana Shaping, 500 = [Gatherer] or [Stone Gatherer]

It was a simple combination, but it was a good one.

- - - -

Erick, Kiri, and Poi, stood atop a [Teleporting Platform] that floated over orange dunes to the north of Spur, two [Teleport]s away. Looking out across the land, Erick saw agave half buried by the moving dunes, and mimics standing tall above the sands.

He would have done this a single [Teleport] from Spur, but a sandstorm was moving in against the city. This far north, he was past the storm.

Erick lowered the platform to touch down on the sands, and prepared his spell in his mind, linking form to function, and [Stoneshape] to rads. Rads weren’t exactly stones. In fact, they were as much of a stone as they were water, or air, or fire, or shadow or light. They were mana, and mana was possibility. But stone was a good place to start, because stone could also be used to carve into bodies, to get to the rads. The other elements could do that too, sure, but stone was the most versatile, and most readily transformed into blades. And so, Erick had made a rhyme, both because magic would need to fill in a lot of gaps, and a good version of [Gatherer] was extremely necessary for future endeavors.

Maybe he’d make a [Prismatic Gatherer] in the future, but that was a mountain to summit. This [Stoneshape] version was as simple as climbing a minor hill.

Erick breathed deep, then stepped off of his platform, onto the dune. He felt the sand shift under his feet. Some of it cascaded down the sides of the sandy hill, some of it just slipped into his shoes. This was fine. He smiled, as he imagined touching the world, and joked,

“There once was a being of tools

“that gathered according to rules

“on battlefields ended

“from targets intended

“And brought back plentiful [Jewels].”

Mana rushed through Erick to join the sand in front of him, to soak in, changing inert sand into something else, something with movement. Sand slipped from sand as a creation of magic a meter tall stood up, into the air, dragging dirt with it, only to have excess whipped away by the wind. A blue box appeared.

Summon Jewels, instant, close range, 720 MP

Summon a creation of hardy stone that will retrieve a large amount of rads from as many monsters it can, while it can. Lasts 1 hour.

Erick smiled, as his attention returned to Jewels. The summon had not moved since it stood up, but as the wind uncovered more of it, Erick saw that ‘Jewels’ was a deceptively simple creation.

It was a crystal. Perhaps quartz. Perhaps something else. But it was definitely clear stone, with six sides, a top that came to a point, a body about a meter long, and a bottom that also came to a point. It was a little rough, but it was pretty. Iridescence flickered across the skin of the summon, as it lazily turned in the air. What truly caught Erick’s attention, though, was the intent layered into the air around it, and the tiny cascades of sand it was touching off, five meters away from itself, in every direction.

Erick turned left, and summoned a [Withering] onto the desert. Mimic kill notifications would have popped up, but Erick had already shoved them to the sides, as he watched Jewels’ reaction. Jewels did not react.

After a minute, the notifications stopped.

Erick said, “Jewels—”

The creation perked up at its name. The intent Erick had seen touched off minor cascades of sand as it lifted up into the air, pulling a hundred different stone knives from the dune.

“OooH!” Kiri said, backing up a bit on the floating platform. “Should we be worried, Erick?”

“No.” Erick watched, as larger knives and hammers, which were just hard packed rocks, lifted from the sand. “… Probably not.” He quickly said, “Jewels. Go collect the rads from the monsters I killed. Harm no living thing in the process.”

Jewels rushed down the face of the dune like a minor avalanche and a tornado, all at once.

Erick Handy Aura’d himself off of the dune and back onto the [Teleporting Platform].

Kiri said, “Wow. That’s fast! Or…” She paused. “Hmm. Maybe not that fast, actually.”

Erick watched the summon go, and saw the problem Kiri saw. Jewels got to the first body and ripped into it, collecting a rad for its trouble. That rad was then stuck to the crystal in the center of the storm of blades, but then Jewels stopped. He waited. He was doing something, but whatever it was, was not visible.

It was a minute before Jewels took off again, headed straight for the next corpse, over fifty meters away. The corpse after that was only twenty meters away, and Erick could see it from here, but it took Jewels another minute to reach the conclusion that he had to go that way, and dig through that body.

“I guess [Scan] magic is necessary.” Erick said, “I had hoped it wouldn’t be.”

“It was either [Scan] magic for a tier 3, or keeping it tier 2.” Kiri said, “This is still good. And you can summon a lot more than one.”

Erick rapidly summoned three more Jewels, and sent them off hunting for rads. They tore down the dune while Erick followed them on the hovering platform.

Forty minutes and one grand chase later, Erick’s experiment ended with him standing on the top of a small dune, with a small pile of rads sitting on the sand in front of him. He counted 76, 10 mana rads, which was the number of mimics he had killed with one [Withering]. That many rads was worth 760 mana, or 380 gold.

Erick smiled.

Jewels could stay. Erick might even make him a tier 3 summon with [Cascade Imaging], later, once he got [Particulate Force].

And to help accomplish that, Erick decided to invent another spell, while he had time. He threw a hundred mana into the air, asking if a certain water gathering spell was possible.

Phagar responded, ‘All versions have already been made. Water from stone. Water from air. Water from fire, too, but that one was kinda… not a good spell. Water from water was basically your [Distill], but not—’ He paused. He said, ‘I’m getting the go-ahead for you to try with your water spell, anyway. Something about making integration easier to—’ He spoke unintelligible, unhappy words to someone else, then came back to Erick, offhandedly complaining, ‘Apparently I shouldn’t have said that. Whoops.’

‘Oh… Okay?’

‘Good news, though: Particle Magic should be fully integrated in two months. That means ‘Particulate Force’ is going away, because all magic will once again be compatible with all other magic. The thing with [Ward] stopping Particle Magic will remain, though, and you’re gonna have to buy [Condense Particle] yourself, just like everyone else.’

‘Okay… That’s…’ Erick was… Happy about that? Yeah. He was happy about that. That saved him a Class Ability Slot. The rest of Phagar’s announcement was perfectly fine. Erick sent, ‘That’s great!’

‘Hopefully!’ Phagar’s connection broke.

Erick smiled, as he turned his attention to the sky. Poi and Kiri hovered on his platform, five meters away, while he stood on a small dune.

Endless blue stretched from horizon to horizon, while a warm wind blew from the north. Not a single cloud marred the heavens. It was a beautiful sight. There probably wasn’t a lot of water up there, but he was still going to try.

Erick called out to the firmament,

“A cy-cle exists for all to see! A twist of air, deposits thee

“upon the land for life to be, growing, here-now! Up goes the tree!

“But wind steals thee from land and sea, now down thy be, and hidden see?

“But then heat rises up and ‘round again, up goes the sky and rounds the bend!

“A sky of rain, waters the land! H and O and H take hands,

“And down again and up and then, around and ‘round and ‘rounds the bend!

“A cy-cle exists for all to see, but here be now, I call to thee

“Come down the sky, water the land, grant us a blessing now and be

“By will and life and cycle seen! Be here! Be now! I call to thee!”

Erick collapsed to the side. The magic was over.

It was only after it was over that he realized that Kiri and Poi had both been screaming at him, trying to get him to stop, but waves of power had been pushing them away. He also realized that the song he had spoken was not the one he had planned. He had planned a much shorter instance of magic. A much more controlled burst of power, and intent.

What he got was something else. Some other force, speaking through him, guiding his words, calling to something deeper than Erick had intended.

As Poi rapidly broke his rod of [Treat Wounds], healing Erick, staunching the flow of blood from his nose and ears, and Kiri yelled about getting out of there, Erick briefly read the blue boxes in front of him, ignoring the one about it being a Basic Tier spell.

Control Weather 1, one minute, super long range,

Change the weather in a location. Effect lasts longer if desired weather and location are conducive to each other. Minimum duration: . Maximum duration: .

Particle Mage Only.

Rozeta thanks you for enriching the Script.

+3 ability points.

Uh. Sininindi is going to be pissed. Try getting in front of that one, this time. ~Rozeta.

Somewhere in all of that, the sky changed. Clouds appeared. Light, fluffy things, for sure.

But nothing else happened.

Erick smiled weakly as Poi yelled at him to accept a [Teleport]. He mumbled something that was almost a ‘yes’, but his voice was broken, even with all Poi’s healing. Erick tried to joke about Poi being ‘unable to get it up’, having broken his ‘rod’, but it was a weak joke, and both Poi and Kiri just paled.

And then some other force took a hold of his mind. Poi’s sapphire blue eyes got really big, or maybe it was an illusion of some sort. The world flickered blue, twice, and then Erick was in the admissions room of the Church hospital. He knew this place. But everything was tainted red. He had blood in his eyes, didn’t he?

Oh. He had forgotten to check in on the Mage Trio, didn’t he? Eh. He forgave himself. He had a lot of projects on his plate, after all. As he tried to look around, but failed, the only coherent thought he barely managed to form, was that he did not have time for whatever was happening right now, so if everyone could please just let him get back to work, that would be great.

And then he knew no more, as sleep took him, dragging him under, while multiple hands lifted him up.