by Simon Archer
Let me just say that standing that close to a star with a slowly melting chunk of metal in your hand wasn’t exactly fun, but it made melting one of the metals with the highest melting point in the universe relatively easy.
Still, I wasn’t here to have fun. No, I was here to learn. So, as the metal in my hand began to melt, I focused on keeping the globule together. I didn’t really care if it maintained its shape or anything, I just wanted it to not go flying off every which way.
It was harder than I imagined, but soon, I had a glowing globule of tungsten in my hand. So, you know, pluses and minuses. Then I teleported my molten tungsten to the dome Queenie had made for me and began to coat the surface of it. This part, thankfully, wasn’t that hard because magic, even though I had to both keep the rock from shattering, melting, or otherwise coming apart when I applied molten tungsten to it.
It probably goes without saying, but I repeated the process until I had covered all the rocky dome’s surface with the metal, and then I waited for it to cool. Given the vacuum of space, that didn’t take very long at all, but even still, I took the opportunity to practice using my cold magic to make sure the cooling took place both evenly and efficiently. It wasn’t hard since it functioned similarly to the earth magic I’d gained from the title, but I’d never been one to turn down practice.
“I have made a bowl,” I said when I pointed at my new disk a few hours later. “Gaze upon it and be amazed.”
“It is a very nice bowl, master,” Queenie said with a smile. “What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m glad you asked, Queenie,” I replied with a flourish of my hands. “I’m going to fill it with ore and move it toward the sun. Since tungsten has a much higher melting point than the other metals, it will hold its shape while everything else melts. Once the contents are molten, I’ll teleport to the planet and pour it in.”
“And this won’t cause the planet to explode?” Queenie asked, clearly concerned.
“Well…” I rubbed the back of my head. “It might.” I tapped my forehead with one finger. “But I have math on my side.”
It was true. I had worked out all the calculations a while ago, and I had considerable room for error.
“That is not surprising, master. I should never have doubted that you would find a way.” Queenie seemed pretty impressed as she spoke. “Would you like us to begin moving the ore into the disk?”
“Yes.” I smiled at her. “I would like that a great deal.”
24
Hours? Days? Weeks? Months?
I’m not sure how long it took to melt all the gold, platinum, osmium, iridium, and other metals into soup and pour it into the core of the planet successfully, but the real answer was that it felt like it took forever and no time at all because we were all working incredibly hard at a breakneck pace.
I could use my power over cold to keep the metal from solidifying while we poured it into the core, but the moment I teleported the empty bowl back into space for Queenie to refill, it would start to solidify, albeit really slowly. It also would melt everything else down there, turning the framework I’d made into bits of molten magma.
Still, teleportation was a thing, and with it on my side, I made a bazillion trips back and forth, taking molten metals and pouring them into the center of the planet.
We started with the densest materials, along with a good helping of iron, nickel, and cadmium, and when most of them had been poured into the planet, we started mixing in the less dense but still kind of dense materials like silver, molybdenum, and niobium.
So, in the end, we had a core and inner core full of molten liquid metal, and that caused a bunch of earthquakes to fracture the surface of the planet as it began to adjust to its new gravity. Admittedly, I was a bit worried the planet might explode like a bomb because of the added pressure, but fortunately, the planet just shifted on newly formed tectonic plates as it rotated around, restarting its new dynamo.
That said, the planet’s surface was definitely different as it began to settle, even with the sudden earthquakes caused by the escaping heat of the molten rock below.
“How long until the planet is ready, master?” Queenie asked as she stood next to me.
We stood just a few feet from the massive hole I’d dug, only now it wasn’t a hole because it was filled with magma. It wasn’t all metal since much of the rock in the mantle had melted due to the extreme heat and pressure of the new metal core.
“I’m not sure,” I said as I tried to run the computations in my head. “It all depends on when the planet stabilizes, and my best estimates are in terms of millions of years.” I sighed as another earthquake rocked the whole planet, and if I wasn’t a god, I might have been scared. “Right now, we’ve drastically increased the mass of the planet’s core, and with it increased the gravity significantly. So we have to wait for the mantle and crust to re-adjust.” I waved my hands at the surroundings. “Hence, the earthquakes.” I nodded into the distance where a plume of red hot rock and debris burst from the surface in a volcanic explosion. “And the volcanos.”
I scratched my cheek. “While I have calculated how to add the materials so that once it stabilizes we have a proper liquid to solid ratio and that the magnetic field generated by said core is able to effectively keep the sun from baking the planet to a crisp as it strips off the atmosphere, there are a lot of variables involved in the cooling process.”
“Is there anything we can do in the meantime?” Queenie asked, and I realized she was anxious for something to do. After all, the last several weeks had been a flurry of activity, and now we were just waiting. “Perhaps I could begin mining the other planets--”
She said more, but I honestly didn’t hear it because, at that moment, a notification appeared across my vision.
A mirror to a new world has opened up. Would you like to investigate?
“I think we’ll have some other things to do in the meantime,” I said right before I teleported us back to the Hall of Mirrors. As promised, there was now a new mirror, and though I couldn’t see into it very well, I could just make out the edges of a forest within.
“What is this, master?” Queenie stared at the mirror in confusion.
“It’s a new world,” I said as I looked closer, trying to discern information about it. Unlike the Training Dungeon, this one did not appear to be a dungeon which made sense since the message had called it a new world. That meant it was, more or less, a fully functioning place on the other side. And likely, once I stepped into it, I’d have an objective to complete before I could return to my planet.
“But it is not a dungeon.” Queenie chewed on her lip for a moment. “So, I do not understand its purpose.”
“We’ll have to enter to find out.” I shrugged. “And if we don’t go soon, we run the risk of it closing. If that happens, we’ll lose access to whatever it is in there we were supposed to find.”
“Ah.” Queenie was silent for a moment. “Do you think Rhapsody has put it here now because she knows you have time to enter?”
It was an interesting question to be sure. While new worlds had sometimes opened up in the middle of something time sensitive, usually it had been after a major event had been accomplished.
“I think so.” I rubbed the back of my head. “I give it even odds that by the time we finish whatever is through there,” I gestured at the mirror, “the planet here will be stabilized. At least, that is how it worked in Terra Forma.”
“I agree with your assessment, master,” Queenie replied, absolute faith in her voice. “Your logic is infallible.”
“I mean, it’s a good guess,” I said with a shrug, “and it’s not like we have anything else to do.”
Admittedly, part of me was hesitant about stepping through the mirror without any equipment. I still had an inventory full of stuff, and I had added a few chunks of gold, silver, and platinum into it, as well as various gems. I’d even taken the liberty of also grabbing some flint and iron ore to spark fires, but I
still had nothing in the way of real equipment, and let’s just say that my attempts to fashion usable weapons out of metal were, well, lacking because I didn’t have enough control over my powers yet.
When I was higher level though…
“Do we need anything else?” Queenie asked, and I rubbed my chin as I thought about it. We also had a few roughly hewn jugs I’d made out of stone and filled with ice. That was when I found that, like in Terra Forma, things in my inventory didn’t really age, so the ice had stayed nice and frozen.
“I’m going to just cook some more food for the road, and then we’ll go,” I said, not bothering to add that the meat I was going to cook had come from the ants I’d killed during our trips to the Training Dungeon. I wasn’t sure why I cared since Queenie hadn’t cared much before either.
“Would you like me to do it, master?” Queenie said as I moved to step out of the Hall of Mirrors so I could use the star to barbeque me some ant. “I will gladly cook for you.”
“I actually like doing it myself, but you’re welcome to come.” I smiled at her.
“I would like that, very much.” She nodded and followed me out.
As we approached the sun, I began taking out some of the butchered ant meat. It had been sorted into grades based on the type of ant it had come from. As I moved toward the sun with a few chunks, I decided to just cook the worst of it because I wanted to level up my cooking skill, if it was a thing here, before I tried cooking with the higher grades of meat. After all, in Terra Forma, high cooking combined with good ingredients could make foods that granted stat bonuses in addition to tasting great.
“Why are you only cooking Scouts and Sentries?” Queenie asked as I added a bit of salt I’d found while digging to the meat for flavor. “Surely the Soldiers or other ants would be better.” I turned to see her nose wrinkled.
“You’re not disgusted that I’m eating ants?” I asked as I picked up the salted meat and moved closer to the star.
“It is but the chain of life. Things that die must be eaten.” She shrugged as the meat began to sizzle and pop, and I soon wished that I could smell it out in the vacuum of space. “If they had fallen in my old kingdom, we would have eaten them as well.”
“Well, in that case,” I said as I finished the first piece and broke it apart, “would you like the first piece?” I offered her the greasy lump of cooked ant flesh.
“It would be better for you to eat first.” She bowed her head. “As you are the master, and I am but your queen.”
“I insist.” I waggled the meat.
“Very well,” she said, but she still looked at me strangely as she took the hunk in her delicate fingers and took a small bite. Then her eyes widened in shock. “Oh, master!”
“What? Is it bad?” I asked, suddenly worried. Then I glanced at her info page to see if she’d been poisoned.
“This tastes amazing.” She swallowed the bite in her mouth. “What did you do to it?”
“I just salted it.” I shrugged and took a bite of my own piece, and the taste was quite unlike anything I’d ever had. Like salty, spicy beef with kimchi. I wasn’t even sure how that had happened, but I was so pleased that I ate the whole piece even though I didn’t actually need to eat while I was a god.
“Please always salt the meat, master.” Queenie grinned at me. “It makes it very delicious.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said as I finished up the rest and put it into my inventory. “Glad to see those lessons I took with that Iron Chef paid off.”
“You worked with a chef made of iron?” Queenie asked, suddenly confused. “How does he move?”
“It’s just a title,” I said with a wave. “Anyway, I think we’re about as ready as I can be. Unless you can think of something else?”
“No, master.” She shook her head. “We have food and water.” She smiled. “My kind do not require much else that we cannot easily find along the way.”
“Well then,” I said as I teleported us back to the mirror. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
25
The sound of rustling leaves jarred me from sleep, and as my eyes snapped open, I realized I was lying on a giant stone table in the middle of a goddamned forest naked as a jaybird which was crazy because two seconds ago, I’d been in the Hall of Mirrors with Queenie.
Only, as far as I could tell, she wasn’t here in the big empty clearing with me. It was even stranger because I felt really different. I’d spent so much time as a god that it took me several seconds to realize I was back in my normal body, and while I was still powerful, the world no longer bent to my whims, at least, not to the same degree.
Plus, I was all alone, and while the sky was blue overhead, I could tell that the sun was already edging toward dusk.
“Queenie?” I said as I sat up and looked around at thick trees and bushes that lined the edges of the clearing, but the only response was the rustling of the bushes about fifty feet away. “Is that you?”
As I peered closer, the biggest, ugliest looking hobgoblin I’d ever seen burst through those bushes and eyed me like I was a present and it was Christmas morning. Pustules covered its face, and even though its skin was a particularly vomit-inducing shade of green-yellow, I was suddenly very glad that it wearing a loincloth because, and trust me when I say this, no one wanted to see that.
“What have we here?” it asked in a high-pitched singsong voice as it pushed through the bushes and unslung its gnarled stone axe from the sling on its back.
“Fresh meat for the grinder,” another hobgoblin said as it appeared alongside the first one, and that’s pretty much when I realized two things.
There were six of them, and they were talking about eating me.
“Meat!” another cried as it gestured at me with a large cleaver. “Meat for the stew!” He turned. “Bring the stewpot!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” I said as I searched around for something to defend myself and realized that unless I were going to try hitting them with dirt clods, I’d have to rely on my fists, which was fine. I was, quite honestly, down for a little fisticuffs. Sure, I could have grabbed the mandibles from my inventory, and I would if I needed to do so, but for now, I wanted to see how things worked out, especially because I was a fair bit bigger than them.
“And why shouldn’t we eat you?” the first hobgoblin pressed as he licked his bulldog jowls with a black forked tongue.
“Because I’m too tough.” I slid off the altar and faced them, and while I should have been scared of them because their names were highlighted in orange, letting me know they were a fair bit higher level than me, I just wasn’t. “I wouldn’t taste good at all.”
“That’s why we have the stewpot!” the cleaver hobgoblin cackled. “Boil anything long enough, and it will be edible enough to make a turd.”
“You’d think that, but it’s not true,” I said as settled into a fighting stance.
My change in stance didn’t go unnoticed by the hobgoblins, but it must not have bothered them because they just laughed.
“And what do you plan on doing?” the axe hobgoblin asked as one ridged brow cocked up in amusement. “Pummeling us with your dick?” He gestured at me. “You don’t have a single weapon, and we carry the finest hobgoblin steel in the lands.”
“Trust me when I say this, but I don’t need a weapon for the likes of you.” I took a step toward them and shook my fists. “Besides, I’ve got Thunder and Lightning.”
“It doesn’t matter really what you think,” the hobgoblin said, and I realized the others had spread out to encircle me. That was fine, though, because I instantly thought of about sixteen ways to take them all down. I mean, this was the kind of thing I had trained for, after all.
“Well, that’s kind of rude,” I said right before the hobgoblin to my left loosed an arrow at me.
In one practiced movement, I stepped to the side and snatched the projectile out of mid-air, and then before they could react, I concentrated my Aura into my body and
let it loose as I flung the arrow back at its owner.
The creature’s eyes widened in shock right before the arrow’s head smacked into his helmetless forehead with enough force to fling him back off his feet.
“Who’s next?” I asked as his lifeless corpse twitched on the ground. As I raised my hand and used Auric Extraction on the body, I felt a grin cross my face as I goaded the others in with a gesture. “Well?”
Pattern: Hobgoblin Archer has been learned. Would you like to create a Hobgoblin Archer?
“Kill the human!” the cleaver hobgoblin cried and charged with a guttural scream before I could summon the creature.
“We will spread him on bread!” a spear hobgoblin taunted as he moved in from behind.
Flanking me would have been a smart move… only they were so slow that it was almost like they weren’t moving at all.
I stepped to the side as I produced a mandible from my inventory, parried the cleaver hobgoblin’s strike with my weapon, and smashed my foot into his knee. His leg gave out instantly, and as he collapsed to the ground with a scream, the spear hobgoblin lunged at me, his weapon pointed right at where my heart would be.
I let him nearly stab me, but as the spear got close enough to plunge through my flesh, I moved. All it took was a simple spin combined with a quick strike to tear the weapon free of the hobgoblin’s hands.
“Looks like I’ve got your spear,” I said right before I head-butted the hobgoblin in the face. The blow shattered his nose, and as he stumbled backward, I shoved him off balance, which was easy enough because I was almost three feet taller than him and juiced on Aura. Then, I whirled around and flung the spear I’d stolen at another hobgoblin.
The Aura-infused spear ripped through the hobgoblin’s chest with so much force that it pinned the creature to the tree behind him. As blood spurted into the air in great arcs and his feet frantically kicked in the air before going limp, the other hobgoblins took off into the brush and yelled, “Retreat!”
