Chapter 20
[ERROR: UNDEFINED REFERENCE] – The God of Secrets and The Unspoken, was extremely worried. He paced back and forth in his temple, clicking sounds echoing around the temple as he walked. He wasn’t very focused on what he was currently doing in the Celestial Plane, however, as he was watching that damn Human down in the mortal plane. He was observing through the eyes of a nearby bird.
How had a puny human uncovered so much of what he strived to keep a secret for so long? Primal Magic was not something for mortals to toy with! He fumed with rage and wished he could just summon lightning to strike the human down, much like Clavin – The God of Calamity and Unbalanced Scales could probably do. Maybe he could go and recruit his help? [ERROR: UNDEFINED REFERENCE] forced himself to calm down and think rationally. It was not possible to directly interfere like that, even if a god wanted to, the wheel wouldn’t allow it. In some ways, The Wheel was his best ally and also his worst enemy at the same time.
What’s worse, was that the mortal was discovering new things – secret things – at an astonishing rate! How much longer would it be until he discovered the special forces exclusive to Divines? If he discovered those and decided to hunt down the followers of Divines he disliked it could be over for them. He stopped pacing in his temple and stepped out onto its balcony, looking across the bowl-shaped celestial plane. The celestial plane was organised in such a manner that the nemesis of any given Divine was exactly on the opposite side of it to each other. It was why when new Divines emerged, they came in pairs; always the exact opposite sides of each other.
Did the Divines come first, or the Celestial Plane? Nobody knew… all they knew was that this was the reality they lived in, as arranged by The Creator – the mysterious ancient entity all the Divines feared and respected.
[ERROR: UNDEFINED REFERENCE] looked out over the plane, in the center of the celestial plane sat the great celestial temple, a meeting place for all the Divines, if you will. It was at least three times the size of even the most powerful temples; and in his opinion, it was completely unnecessary and ugly. He was a fan of small, hidden things after all. The temples around the edges of the bowl-shaped celestial plane were all elevated to be higher than it, so that each god always had a view of their nemesis’ temple, something he disliked greatly.
He forced himself to look beyond the great celestial temple and at the temple directly opposite to his. It was a hideous temple, unlike his camouflaged temple, which was hard to spot unless you knew what you were looking for. Memeta’s temple was a shining beacon of a multitude of bright colours. It had a central great tower that shone like a lighthouse as well.
Apparently inside it, was a massive library and archives… and a stripclub. Memeta was serious about there being no secrets, after all.
[ERROR: UNDEFINED REFERENCE] had never been able to bring himself to even go inside Memeta’s temple. Nothing could stop a god doing as they please in the celestial plane, so Memeta had paid him quite a few visits, mainly just to gloat at him when big secrets were revealed; which was quite often, recently.
[ERROR: UNDEFINED REFERENCE] knew that Memeta – The Goddess of Memetics and Free Information – was ecstatic, and had begun cheering the mortal on with gusto. The stupid bitch! Couldn’t she see that Primal Magic in the hands of mortals could only put all of the Divines in jeopardy? The last time he had seen her at the great celestial temple she had taken great joy in rubbing it in that so many secrets of the world were being revealed by that damn mortal. In that moment, he dearly wished you could kill another Divine.
This all combined and left him no choice but to side with Eterna – Goddess of Order and All Things Eternal, in her quest to stop this mortal at all costs. He was one of the more powerful Divines in the celestial plane, and Eterna would be more than happy to have him join her.
He quickly conjured up a teleport and was in her temple within seconds. Eterna was currently seated and in a trance, probably busy obsessing over the mortal like he had been recently. He quietly walked up to her and stood waiting, eventually she noticed him and nearly jumped out of her chair.
“What is it with you and sneaking up on people like that!” She shouted. She was justified in her anger, of course. [ERROR: UNDEFINED REFERENCE] looked like a shadow to others, being a god of secrecy, he was hard to spot. Unlike Memeta, who put all her secrets on display. It was also common courtesy among the Divines not to teleport directly into each other's temples, a courtesy that he seemingly didn’t care about.
Not receiving a response, Eterna sighed, it was not like the god of secrets would tell her much anyway, even for simple things like why he didn’t have the courtesy to announce his presence.
“Well, what is it you want then? You only ever talk to others when you need something, don’t you?” Eterna asked, with a slight undertone of anger in her voice.
[ERROR: UNDEFINED REFERENCE] thought for a moment, it pained him to tell her that he wanted to work with her. His deeds, as well as his intentions, were things he’d have liked to keep secret after all. However it was a necessity to inform her of his plans to help her.
“I wish to join you in getting rid of this stupid mortal, before he causes any more secrets to be discovered. You can count on my support from now on.” [ERROR: UNDEFINED REFERENCE] said, his voice was quiet and would have been hard to make out, if it weren't for the great hearing that Divines possessed.
Eterna nodded in response.
“That's good to hear, what are you planning to do?” She asked in vain, knowing that asking him to reveal anything was like trying to squeeze water with your hands.
Rather than answer, [ERROR: UNDEFINED REFERENCE] blinked out of existence as he teleported elsewhere.
Eterna was left a little underwhelmed at their conversation, it was not everyday that one of the top twenty most powerful Divines in the celestial plane offered to back your cause. She just hoped he wouldn’t try anything stupid like trying to break The Wheel. It had taken all the combined power of the Divine Assembly to create the wheel, it would be best not to pursue something stupid like that.
Things were looking up for Eterna now, there was a rapidly forming rift emerging amongst the Divines, with two opposing sides: those who supported the mortal and those who opposed him. As it had been since the dawn of time: opinions on the Celestial Plane had a binary quality.
Currently, Eterna and her allies vastly outnumbered the Custodian of Science and her supporters, which would certainly help her, if outright war broke out amongst the beings in the celestial plane. Normally, such divide in the celestial plane would be a terrible thing; but currently, with a mortal working hard to tamper with the balance of the beautiful system she worked hard to create, she could not care less about division amongst the Divines.
Calling any fight between celestial beings “war” is somewhat of an oxymoron though. Divine beings couldn’t kill each other, even back when they could manifest on the mortal planes. So they had to fight with other means. In the past, and before The Wheel of Aspects was introduced, this involved rendering assistance to their followers and duking it out mortal for mortal.
Now, however, they had to use their limited amount of faith points to give blessings and issue divine decrees to their churches and cults. The followers of the divines – especially those at opposing ends of the same aspect – constantly fought because of this, each god trying to kill off the followers and knowledge of another in order to garner faith points and send their nemesis back to being a non-sentient existence.
The Wheel, thankfully, put a stop to the large-scale celestial wars of the past. Since Divines could no longer manifest in the mortal planes, most mortals in this day and age were sceptical of their existence. This meant that only the small groups of churches and cults still believed and supported their gods.
Many of the older gods wished for a return to the old times, where their power was unlimited and they could simply will mortals to die if they pleased. Mordron – The God of Death and Pestilence – was a particularly strong advocate for this one. Thankfully, The Wheel put all these worries to rest, that was until the troublesome mortal arrived.
Eterna hoped that whatever the god of secrecy had planned would work out in her favour.
[ERROR: UNDEFINED REFERENCE], meanwhile, was back in his temple, watching over the mortal. He couldn’t directly interfere; but if the mortal tried to reveal the secrets of Primordial Magic to anyone, or discovered too much more, then he would take action.
While he hated doing this, he couldn’t risk a repeat of the past, like when magic was first revealed to the mortals on that plane.
It was once said that any sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic, and as Ethan had just discovered: any sufficiently simple magic was indistinguishable from technology.
He still couldn’t believe himself: magic was, in matter-of-fact, an almost mathematical construct laced with logic principles.
Maybe it was similar to chemical formulae? But not quite… No, it had more in common with a programming language. It had parameters, arguments and functions just like many programming languages after all. Maybe rather than calling it primordial it would make more sense to call it programmagical?
Back on Earth, programming may as well be magic to most people, so it would be a funny comparison to make, well, funny for Ethan at least. It's not like anyone else would get it.
He smiled at this thought.
He was planning to find out more… much, much more, once the matter with the Krell leadership was settled, one way or another. Being the leader of the Krell would solve a lot of Ethan's problems. He would finally have the resources to pursue whatever he needed to, plus he would be able to take advantage of his knowledge to take care of the Krell situation. He would either become their leader and propel them out of their hole in the mountains using his knowledge, or simply leave.
Ethan put these thoughts to the side for the moment, he could think about dreams of glory later, right now he needed to do more research into Primordial Magic.
Ethan had woken up energised and refreshed from some peaceful sleep. The Rocs had not tried anything while he slept on the rocky ledge, Kothar had said that they couldn’t reach them even if they tried. He was thankful for that comfort at least, even if Kothar was lying. Ethan lifted his legs over the side of his hammock and dropped the short distance to the floor. Pain shot through his foot as he accidentally stepped on a particularly sharp rock.
What a great way to start the day… he angrily thought while limping on one foot. He quickly put his shoes back on to avoid any more incidents.
Kothar was currently sleeping in his hammock. His watch had ended not too long ago. Ethan could have used his AI to monitor the surroundings while they both slept, but he couldn’t reveal this titbit of information to Kothar, so they had to settle for taking turns at watching the surroundings. Ethan hadn’t been looking forward to it being his turn, until he thought and figured he could use the time to go into his simulated lab. He tried steeling himself not to enter the lab, but the problem was that nothing could slake his thirst for knowledge. He just had to study magic, and after resisting for a mere 15 minutes, the boredom became unbearable and he finally gave in.
“AI, I want you to keep a watch on the surroundings and enter simulation mode.” he commanded.
<Acknowledged. Initiating time compression protocol.>
For all intents and purposes, and to any observer, he looked to be sitting very still while scanning his surroundings mechanically; but in his mind, he sat on a chair in his virtual lab.
The transition was always slightly disorienting, but he’d gotten used to it by now. He took a look around him and stretched.
The lab was a spacious room filled with various simulated instruments, bookcases full of books on many topics, and a full media centre. There was also an attached kitchen with a full fridge; but that was for the sake of convenience and familiarity, and didn’t see much use. Eating food in the simulated environment would just serve to hide any real hunger you had, often confusing your body and making you feel ill.
It was all modelled after his real lab back on Earth. Almost an exact clone.
The thought made him cringe. He’d been trying to avoid thinking about home as much as possible. He did not want to think of his family. He did miss them, but couldn’t afford to sink into depressive thoughts about his situation.
He couldn’t help but wonder what they thought about his disappearance though. Did he even disappear from his original universe? Maybe he was just a clone of that Ethan West and the real one was still going on with his life? Ethan hoped so, at least his family would not have to deal with his disappearance then. Now there’s a thought. He could be one of billions of copies of Ethan West strewn across billions of parallel universes.
Enough! He didn’t need yet another existential crisis. He had work to do, and not enough time to do it, even in this simulated environment that slowed the real world down to a crawl.
He sat at his desk, accessed his virtual computer, and pulled up all of his files. On a large hologram in front of him there were hundreds of thousands of unorganised files, accounting to nearly 326 Terabytes of newly gathered information in his few short months in this world. It was a mess because his AI didn’t need it organised to find what it was looking for; but Ethan did however.
Today, he would file and cross-reference everything he’d learnt so far.
First there was Alchemy, he started with his knowledge of it so far. He got the AI to run a search and gather all the files related to Alchemy and put them into one place, 25 terabytes of files were organised into one data node.
Alchemy was the art of extracting mana imprints – which were essentially organic runes – from living things and refining or mixing them together to create a certain effect, depending on the wanted end result.
But with his new knowledge of Primordial Magic, he now understood so much more! The ‘organic runes’ extracted by Alchemy were actually Thaumic ‘proteins’… organic Thaumic formulae given shape and function by the creatures and plants they were extracted from!
That led to a new question, though: how did organisms in this world evolve to incorporate Thaums in their biological make? That was an interesting question, and he’d need the magical equivalent of a microscope to find out.
He resolved to make one if given the chance. [Analyse] was useful, but at his low level, it was not possible for it to delve on the microscopic level and reveal that much detail. He wasn’t sure if it could even reveal such information. What if he used [Analyse] while looking down a microscope? Would it analyse the microscope or what he was looking at? Ethan sorely wanted to put this to the test.
He was no biologist, but he needed better understanding to advance his Alchemy, especially if he wanted to take advantage of the fruits of the Mother of Chaos. If he didn’t figure it out first, someone else would and he would be at a disadvantage.
If you do refine the fruits from the trees and eat or drink them, are the effects permanent or just temporary? Ethan filed away that thought and resolved to look into it when he could.
The next problem, then, was sample size. He’d need to travel far and wide to collect enough samples from each biome there was on this world. There were only so many ingredients he could gather for alchemy from around the Krashi mountain range. Maybe he could figure out some way of synthetically producing these ingredients for Alchemy? They were effectively ‘magical proteins’ and could maybe be produced by a ‘magical ribosome’ when fed with the correct information?
How the hell am I supposed to make a ribosome to try that with? Even if I can manipulate things on a microscopic scale, I probably wouldn’t be able to do this process on a large enough scale to even matter.
He sighed.
It seems I’ll be stuck with having to go and find the ingredients, at least for now. I’ll have to work on that, too; but how can I convince the Krell to just let me go? Every time I think I have reached stability, shit happens. Granted, it was my fault this time, but when are things going to finally settle down? Ethan shelved these thoughts for later as well.
Back to the problem of the magical microscope: he thought he had an idea or two for a solution there; but first, he had to take a look at something else.
He opened up the enchantments database he’d captured back when Eragoth allowed him to scan her treasure room, and started analysing everything. This was his first chance to sit down and calmly inspect the data since then. He also grouped all his information on Enchantments into one file, the file was a total of 32 terabytes in size currently, the AI alerted him that some of the information on alchemy and enchantments overlapped and had been linked into both data nodes, with a third data node acting as the common denominator.
Makes sense, I guess, both will rely on some of the same concepts and principles. Ethan decided to look into what exactly is crossing over between the different forms of magic later.
As he continued analysing the data, what he discovered was indeed interesting. Doubly so with his newfound knowledge of Primal Magic.
Runes were indeed being used, and not only that. It appeared as if enchantments were a sort of ‘permanent’ spell model. They looked fairly similar to Mind Runes, and the crazy images warped his three-dimensional perception, but they were there. A true manifestation of Rune Magic in the real world.
Enchantments required mana to operate, but no sane person would enchant something just to sit by it and channel the mana it required every time it needed to operate. Spells simply didn’t work without somebody there to channel the mana, so what was the solution to this problem?
The solution was a soul.
More precisely: a trapped soul, one that worked as the ‘engine’ behind every enchantment. Every enchantment had a piece of a tiny, strange crystal that looked like Opal connected to it, and when Ethan had used [Analyse] on the crystal, he was always told that it was a soul crystal, and given a grade of the soul contained within.
At first he assumed it was part of the enchantment itself, but then he discovered how each enchantment would activate, and in all cases, the enchantment would excite the trapped soul through a channel of ‘Connect’ Thaums, and the soul would then channel mana back into the enchantment itself, thus powering it.
While he couldn’t really quantify the energy contained within each grade of soul crystal, he had a rough idea of their power outputs.
There were 7 grades he’d come across in Eragoth’s massive collection: Petty, Lesser, Common, Greater, Grand, Black, and Radiant.
He was quite sure the last two were special somehow, he just didn’t know why that was. Although he could guess, because they were only used to power the most powerful of enchantments, like the Metal Golems that Eragoth kept – those were using the Radiant type.
Although in the Golems’ case, the system duly informed him that they were powered by crystal cores, and not just soul crystals. Cores seemed to be an even more specialised version of these crystals, and involved multiple different crystals working together. The crystals were placed into 3 metal hoops that surround a solid metal core of some kind, the hoops would revolve around this core under their own power and this somehow powered the Golem. Cores apparently were always active, while crystals required activation on demand.
His analysis of the Golems was very rudimentary. He sorely wished he could pop one open and study it to his heart’s content. Alas, things were bad with Eragoth at the moment, and he doubted she would have agreed to this regardless. She did say that Metal Golems never regenerated health after all.
Back in the real world Kothar was starting to stir, in slow motion from Ethan's perspective, of course. He would only be able to get a few more hours in the simulated environment before he’d need to quit.
I’m losing focus again, back to the topic at hand. Time to apply my new knowledge to the enchantments and find out how they tick.
And indeed, he did just that, and what he discovered was extraordinary.
The Thaums “Select” and “Connect” were being used heavily everywhere. “Connect” was being chained like a channel to carry mana and energy from rune to rune, almost like the wiring you could see on circuit boards, while “Select” was being used like the transistors of old, and acted like logic gates that controlled the flows.
He also had hundreds of Thaums to sort through and discover their properties, he just couldn’t figure them all out from his scans of the enchantments alone.
He did discover a couple new ones that would help him with his spell casting though:
- Detect: could be used to detect the type of incoming energy.
- Absorb/Reflect: could be used to direct energy.
- Convert: could be used to convert energy from one form to another. This was not 100% energy efficient though, and resulted some waste heat.
But first, he had to adjust the notation for spell formulae to account for the use of “Select” in enchantments:
- A variable shall be prefixed by the dollar sign ‘$’, e.g
$energyType = ‘Light’ - Infuse($energyType) * Target - A conditional statement shall look like this:
$(condition) {reaction for true condition} {reaction for false condition}
But this was very different from spell models, which did not really include any logic circuitry to begin with. Why was that?
Hmm… I just had an interesting idea…
The sun was just below the horizon when he started developing a unique Primordial Spell; the first spell in history to utilise conditional logic in its make.
The sun was completely up when Kothar woke up with a start, and had the shock of his life.
“Magicite! Black magicite!” Aylin Merza said the word for the thousandth time and did yet another jig. The four krell tribesmen assigned to “protect” her looked among each other, one shrugging. They didn’t have a clue why Aylin was so excited after all. As far as they understood it she was getting very excited over some strange black rock. They were looking at her like she was rather insane as she pranced along the crystal caves.
Maybe I am. She thought wryly as she hugged the small bundle to her chest. Luckily Aylin had been able to remember a few spells that she made use of to separate the magicite into more manageable portions. Ha! I never thought having too much magicite would ever be an issue. Although she had an abundance of black magicite, she didn’t know any spells she could use to shape them so she would have to do it the old fashioned way: with patience and a damn good chisel. As they continued to walk through the caves Aylin nearly slipped on a particularly wet rock and reminded herself to stay focused, wouldn’t want to bash her brains out on a rock.
They were currently going back to her “space”, the place where she taught the shamans Alchemy, and what she liked to think of as her “lab”.
What does it matter if it’s not mine? Captive or not, I’m using it, thus it is my lab. She told herself. The thought provided her some consolation at least.
What she was carrying was an ungodly treasure. Perhaps the highest quality magicite the world had ever seen to date. The rocks glinted in the dim torchlight and clacked against each other in her arms as she continued to walk along
The best thing though is that they were all hers! If she had found a treasure like this while still with the Polarii Empire, they would have undoubtedly taken it away and let some higher ranked mage study them, or make use of them. At least being a captive is working out somewhat. She mused.
She avoided yet another depression in the rocky floor of the passageway as she walked along. Now that they were reaching the more used parts of the cave system torches intermittently lined the cavernous walls, and her captors continued to trail her like annoying flies.
While the krell tribesmen following her hadn’t done anything to hinder her activities so far, they were still annoying her to no end. She was sure they were reporting her every action to that hideous woman, too.
Speak of the devil… She groaned. Just in front of her the former matriarch was standing at a crossways in the cave talking to a group of Krell, Aylin froze, there would be no way she could avoid having to go past her, if she went back the krell assigned to follow her would get suspicious and take her that way anyway. She just had to go by and hope that the woman wouldn’t take any interest for whatever reason. Aylin steeled herself and continued walking.
Just as she was passing the group that Eragoth was talking to, the woman spotted Aylin. A frown immediately took hold on her face and she excused herself and started approaching Aylin. Aylin continued walking, trying to act innocent.
“You! What’s that you’re carrying?” She asked. Grabbing on Aylin's shoulder and spinning her around to face her. She did not look happy.
“Hello, Matriarch…” Aylin started diplomatically. Trying desperately to still sound innocent.
“Former Matriarch, and you didn’t answer me.” Eragoth growled. She put her hands on her hips, waiting for an answer.
“Oh? You stepped down? Why is that?” Aylin asked in a somewhat mocking tone, evading the question yet again. A flicker of anger briefly flashed across Eragoth’s face before she responded.
“I asked you a question, didn’t I?” She said as she advanced on Aylin. Seemingly getting ready to use force to get the answer out of her. Aylin flinched back a little bit and decided that potentially getting killed over some rocks wasn’t worth it.
“Fine! Fine! They’re just some interesting crystals I found in the caves. Here… See?” Aylin unrolled the bundle and showed her. Eragoth’s eyes widened upon seeing the magicite.
“WHAT IN SEVEN HELLS ARE YOU DOING WITH BLACK MAGICITE?” The woman screeched. Before Aylin could react, Eragoth tore the bundle from her arms. She held the bundle while crossing her arms, waiting for an explanation.
Well, shit. I should have seen that one coming… SHE would know. Aylin thought irritably as she calmly lifted her hands in supplication.
“Fine, you can have it! I just wanted to study it!” Aylin assured the angry woman. “I’ve never seen black magicite in my life. So I found it to be an interesting subject of study.” She lied through her teeth. Hoping desperately that Eragoth wouldn’t see the lie.
“Do you think me stupid, [Necromancer]?” Eragoth glared daggers at her. Aylin lowered her head in defeat.
The guardsmen looked uneasy at the mention of [Necromancers].
“She’s no longer allowed to venture into the crystal caves. You hear?” Eragoth commanded to the guards. They looked to each other and hesitated. They didn’t know whether they should still follow her orders considering she was no longer the Matriarch.
“I may no longer be the Matriarch, but I’m still an elder! You better listen to what I say, you dimwits!” She scolded. That seemed to get through to them.
“Yes, Matriarch.” One of the guardsmen said. “Erm… elder.” He corrected himself after seeing her looks of murderous rage.
She took the bundle of black magicite and left Aylin to seethe quietly in rage.
“We only wanted a fruit from that big tree.” Adrian said diplomatically from his cage. The woman raised one of her eyebrows.
“Oh? And, say, if we were to give you some of this fruit, will you go back to your city and never come back here?” Asked Elder Ro from her seat on a nearby rock.
As a lawful Paladin of Order, Adrian couldn’t purposefully lie. So he tried to skirt the subject.
“Of course we’d leave.” He said cleverly. This wasn’t technically a lie, since he said nothing about coming back. He hoped she wouldn’t see this.
“That’s not what I asked.” The elder retorted. She stood up and started pacing in between the cages that they hung in.
Damn clever woman.
He saw no choice but to change the subject. He looked over at Giran, desperate for some assistance. She shrugged and non-verbally was saying “Talking to her is your problem not mine.” Adrian took a glance at Normand as well, he was curled up in his cage, still refusing to do anything productive.
“May I ask you about the man who planted the tree? I may have to come back to meet him.” He said carefully. The Elder seemed to take interest in what he said, she stopped pacing and supported herself on her cane, looking Adrian dead in the eye.
“It could have been a woman, a god or goddess, a monster, or any other phenomenon. So, how come you know that it was specifically a man who planted it?” The elder asked sharply, a grin creeping its way onto her face
Damn, she has caught me with my pants down..
Adrian sighed, this woman was too smart for her own good. He could practically feel the wisdom of years dripping from her every word. She must have been questioning people like this for most of her life, Adrian briefly felt sorry for whoever was this woman's partner in life.
It would probably be wise to tell her the truth, but… what if they decided to kill us?
“I’ll tell you if you let my friends go.” Adrian proposed simply, Giran and even Normand suddenly took interest, perking up in their cages a little.
“You are a [Paladin], correct?” The elder asked casually, completely ignoring his proposal. She had started pacing again, making Adrian nervous. A cold sweat was forming on his forehead.
“Yeah, and?” He said.
“So, it’s a question of [Paladin] of what.” The elder stated. She really was onto him.
“I’m not telling you that, no matter what you do.” He snorted.
“Are you willing to withstand torture for this?” She asked. Her words seemed a lot more serious now.
“Yes.” He said frankly. Really Adrian was terrified of being tortured, he wasn’t sure of what tactics these savages would employ.
Seemingly done with her interrogation for now, the Elder walked over and spoke to the guards in hushed tones. The guards nodded at what she said and 4 of them approached Giran’s cage and pointed their spears at her. The half-elf looked around wildly in fear, standing in the middle of the cage as if that would help her avoid the spears somehow.
“What’s going on?” Adrian asked in a panic. Normand rose from his slumber and started shouting. Giran remained quiet but tense, she had closed her eyes and was apparently praying. Nothing happened for a moment. however. The guards simply waited. Adrian tore his eyes from her and saw that Elder Ro was once again in front of his cage.
“Please! She has nothing to do with this! Leave her be-” The Elder cut him off by banging her cane on the cage, the cage rattled loudly in the roomy cave.
“What colour is this?” Elder Ro asked in a clear voice as she held up a blue necklace. Adrian looked on in confusion for a moment, what was she playing at here? Whatever it was, he decided to go along with it for the sake of Giran.
“Blue! Blue! Just leave her be!” Adrian said quickly. The Elder smiled at this response. Giran was looking on in wide eyed terror, considering that her life depended on whatever Adrian would say.
“Say that it is green or she dies.” She commanded.
Oh shit. He thought.
| Name | Ethan West | Species | Human |
|---|---|---|---|
| Class (1st) | Harbinger – Science (Level 8) | Strength (STR) | 18 |
| Class (2nd) | Magineer – Chaos (Level 8) | Vitality (VIT) | 17 |
| XP (Deferred) | 156 (0) | Dexterity (DEX) | 20 |
| AP/SP Available | 5 AP / 4 SP | Agility (AGI) | 24 |
| Health | 173/173 (+1.7/min) | Intelligence (INT) | 25 |
| Mana | 270/270 (+2.5/min) | Wisdom (WIS) | 26 |
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Divine Lawbreaker | You have broken a Divine Law and incurred the wrath of the heavens. Beware the consequences. |
| Runebreaker | You have transcended all forms of magic and unlocked the more mystic base elements behind it. You now wield great power over the arcane. Beware lest you err! |
| Skill | Level | Cost | Description | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Analyse (Active) | 8 (47%) | 4 MP | You analyse any object or living being, obtaining information about it. More details will be revealed as the level of this skill rises. | [Scientist, Level 1] |
| Lecture (Passive) | 5 (22%) | — | You instruct another character on a subject. The level of knowledge conveyed and the success rate are limited by the level of this skill. | [Harbinger – Science, Level 5] |
| Assemble Schematic (Active) | 2 (27%) | 15 MP | You assemble a schematic quickly and efficiently. 10% Less material wasted per level. | [Engineer, Level 1] |
| Adjust Entropy (Sustained) | 6 (78%) | ~ | Adjust the level of entropy in a system or creation. 10% To effectiveness per level. | [Chaos Engineer, Level 5] |
| Stabilise (Active) | 2 (88%) | ~ | Allows you to stabilise any chaotic reaction, quickly bringing down the energy of an unstable system, chemical reaction, spell, or machine. | [Chaos Engineer, Level 5] |
| Mana Manipulation (Passive) | 2 (96%) | — | The ability to manipulate mana is at the core of spell-casting. This skill governs how much mana your body can channel. 2% bonus to maximum mana per level. | [Magineer – Chaos, Level 8] |
| Rune Mastery (Passive) | 2 (31%) | — | The ability to construct and maintain spell models in one’s mind is what governs Rune Magic. Your mastery over runes will increase with the level of this skill. Can control +2 extra runes per spell model per level of this skill. | [Magineer – Chaos, Level 8] |
| Design Schematic (Active) | 2 (43%) | 100 MP | Allows you to design a schematic. | [Scientist, Level 2] |