You have leveled!
You have leveled!
You feel smarter!
Congratulations! You’ve advanced the Fire sphere to expert level four. You have earned ten thousand Experience Points!
Congratulations! You’ve advanced the Water sphere to expert level four. You have earned ten thousand Experience Points!
Congratulations! You’ve advanced the Life sphere to expert level four. You have earned ten thousand Experience Points!
Congratulations! You’ve advanced the Meditation skill to expert level four. You have earned ten thousand Experience Points!
Congratulations! You’ve advanced the Sneak skill to expert level four. You have earned ten thousand Experience Points!
Congratulations! You’ve advanced the Builder skill to expert level four. You have earned ten thousand Experience Points!
Congratulations! You’ve advanced the Hunter skill to expert level four. You have earned ten thousand Experience Points!
The rush of knew sun-concepts went quickly. We’d just gained another couple of levels.
“Alright, secure loot in vaults, rest a bit, study, and gain expert level five and incorporate our new stuff. Then the northern city?”
Gwen nodded, “Sounds good to me, the glade?”
“Sounds good, we can hold back on the celebrating until we’re done, and while we’re checking out that northern city.”
I was pretty sure it was the Lerus Kingdom, but I wouldn’t be sure until we landed there and changed our spawn point.
No one objected, so I brought the ship up, pointed at our large starting island, and took off.
Chapter Nine
It took a couple of days to take care of all that, and we were on the ship headed back to that northern shore kingdom with the port city. The only thing of note was my mana gain again. My mana shield was now sixty thousand, which left me twenty-nine thousand mana to use for spells. I decided I’d use fifteen of it, and just save fourteen in reserves.
It would take me just under five seconds to regain that fifteen thousand, which is why I chose that as my cutoff. I wasn’t sure what challenges we would face, but I knew it wouldn’t be orc tribes anymore, not even dark elf tribes. Maybe a high level being from those races, a master of course could still kill us easily, but the average enemies in those races wouldn’t have much of a chance anymore. Any of us could obliterate a tribe of sixty in seconds.
Outside of random bad luck there wasn’t much of a risk there, but so far instant mortal wounds from head or heart shots seemed to be extremely rare.
The city was large, about the size of Southmere. I’d guess it had about a hundred thousand people living there. It was surrounded by smaller villages and farms all within a ten-mile radius, and it was the only city in the kingdom with a fortified wall. The city itself was pretty well protected from attack by sea as well. The city was on a small bay that only has a narrow inlet from the ocean. No more than two ships could sail safely side by side through it, and the sides of the inlets had siege engines to give them a warm welcome if necessary. There was no battle going on when we’d arrived, but it seemed obvious that they were ready for, and even expected trouble.
If the enemy landed their ships further along the coast, then they’d have to deal with the walls and a siege. The bay itself had fifteen war ships, and about sixty fishing and merchant vessels. There were a lot of empty docks, so I assumed they had even more out in the ocean, either war ships patrolling, or maybe even protection escorts for the merchants and fishermen on trading or fishing voyages.
We landed the ship about a quarter mile out, buried it, and then walked in the rest of the way.
The gate was open, and there were six guards present. I was sure there were a lot more of them close by, in the gate tower.
“What is your business in the city?”
I replied, “Undying, looking for work, tasks, or quests.”
The guard frowned, “Behave yourself. Most of your kind that didn’t take to jobs have been chased off. Also, watch you don’t get captured by our neighboring kingdom, Velus. They didn’t chase out theirs, they put them in the dungeon instead.”
Lara gasped, “The dungeon, why?”
The guard scowled, “Because they’re a bunch of evil pricks, that’s why. Don’t get any ideas of rescuing them either, they have two masters and a grandmaster in service to the king, and their entire dungeon is a magic free zone. We’ve lost a lot of undying that went to try anyway despite our warnings, with grand hopes of creating peace between our two kingdoms.”
The guard snorted in disbelief, “Do yourself a favor, and stay away from them. Those bastards have been trying to invade and make our city a part of their kingdom for as long as we can remember.”
“And here, in…” I trailed off.
“Lerus. Lerus Kingdom. We don’t have a use for people that won’t fight, but we won’t throw your lot in jail either. The king and nobles are good folk if you follow the laws, and reward those that serve them. We’ll just make you all leave if you don’t contribute with coin or labor, no wastrels allowed. If you want to find work outside of in a business, talk to the guard captain. He’ll know if the kingdom needs anything done. The captain can be found at the military office next to the barracks two blocks east. And mind yourselves, no mischief.”
Gwen nodded, “Thank you…”
“Dennis, Guard Dennis Carpenter. You’re looking for Guard Captain Lewis. Now move along, got people waiting.”
Cassie smiled, “Thank you Dennis.”
He grunted as we walked by.
We all moved inside the city, and then turned right and headed east down the street. It was a typical human city, they all seemed to be similar in design. The market street was right inside the gate, because that just made sense, no one wanted carts of vegetables to cross the whole city every morning, or in front of their houses. The castle was in the middle. Noble and merchant housing in the northeast quarter, warehousing for city storage and temporary storage for the docks and merchant ships was in the northwest quarter. Common housing surrounded the market district on both sides, except where we were going which had a row of barracks for the city’s soldiers and guards. After two blocks we made a left, and there was a small office type building right after a large barracks, just as Dennis had said.
We opened the door and went inside. There was a small entry room with a desk, behind the desk was a hallway with several offices on the side, and one door at the end of the hallway. There was an older man in a guard uniform sitting behind the desk.
“What’s your business here.”
Cassie grinned, “We’re undying looking for work. We were told Guard Captain Lewis could help us out with that?”
The old man nodded slowly, “That he can young lady. Head on straight to the back, his office is at the end of the hallway. He’s in a right mood today, so don’t be wasting his time with foolishness.”
Cassie nodded, “Thank you, we won’t.”
We walked around the side of the desk, and into the hallway. We knocked when we got to the end.
“Come in!” growled a voice.
Oh boy. Maybe we should’ve found a bar to celebrate our victory, we hadn’t done that yet, it’d taken two days to take care of the vaults, and to just wind down while we integrated two levels worth of sub-concepts.
Well, we wanted to move on, and explore the world. No one to blame but ourselves, as we let ourselves in the man’s office. He was in his forties at a guess, and had a badly disguised scowl on his face, but at least he tried, right? I let Cassie talk, because let’s face it, she was a hell of a lot cuter than I was, and outgoing. Men appreciated that kind of thing. Not flirty really, just friendly.
Cassie said, “Good morning, Captain Lewis. We’re undying, we were told you might have a job for us on behalf of the kingdom?”
He rolled his eyes, “I suppose like the others you don’t want to join the military and fight against those assholes in Velus?”
> Cassie replied, “That wouldn’t be our first choice, no. Evil races, just point them out, other humans we…” she trailed off.
Lewis nodded, “I understand, your kind ain’t from here, so you don’t know what it’s like to grow up under the threat of constant war. I’ll tell you what we really need. Steel. Even just Iron.”
“Excuse me?” she sounded surprised, I felt that way myself.
Lewis shrugged, “There’s no mountains near here, no mines. We can get ore from one of the kingdom’s down south near the mountains, but they charge us a ridiculous price between hauling it out of the mountains under threat of the evil races, and the time and effort to get it here, I can’t blame them.”
Cassie nodded, “I see.”
Lewis said, “But, if you were to get some, I could see myself parting with a gold for every two ingots.”
Cassie laughed, “We got to this world a month ago, but we weren’t born then. Two gold an ingot.”
Lewis rolled his eyes, “For that price we can just buy it from the kingdom down south. One to one, that’s really the best I can do.”
Cassie smiled, “Deal. We’ll be seeing you soon captain.”
He nodded, “Uh huh, be a doll and close the door on your way out,” he said dismissively.
We turned around and left, and we didn’t speak until we were in the street.
“Anyone else get the feeling we were just sent off on a fool’s errand? Just to get us out of his hair?” I asked.
Gwen giggled, “Yes, but we know something he doesn’t.”
Steve asked, “What’s that?”
Cassie laughed, “Why Steve, that we have a ship, and know exactly where there’s several million tons of already processed ore that Dan can make ingots with. I’m sure we can find some deck and hull plates. The ship was blown apart, but the steel’s got to be around there somewhere, at least some of it. Steel doesn’t vaporize, or at least not from that explosion it wouldn’t have been. We won’t be mining anytime soon, and we can be back in a day instead of months.”
Dan nodded, “You know, we updated the weapons on the ship with expert quality gems, if we did the same for its flight abilities, we could make it sixteen times bigger. I can even just grow it out the back, without any of the grand enchantments moving they’ll be fine.”
Yeah, four times as much mana in the crystal, four times the regen rate, and each mana would do four times as much work. One mana for every four square-feet of metal, per second.
“Okay, but that might be too big. We don’t want to have trouble hiding it, and we don’t want to make it so big that Gwen and Lara can’t cloak it. Being able to cloak avoids a lot of issues, and it allows us to sneak up on the enemy.”
Those two exchanged a look, and Lara answered, “We could probably cloak it now without switching off after this last two-level mana jump. I’d say we could make it three times its current size and be okay if we traded off.”
I nodded, “So we double the length, and then make the new back half twice the width? It would still look like a dart and have good aerodynamics. It would also be a good cargo space. We could fit about thirty people standing up. We’ll also be able to easily haul thousands of ingots. Four thousand for sure, maybe a bit more. We’ll have to make a second door in the back, we won’t want to load and unload through the canopy, a wide cargo ramp type door.”
A quest for metals seemed so blasé, but we’d probably get great experience for it, to prepare Lerus against Velus’s attacks for another generation, or some such thing. The quests thing hadn’t let us down yet, maybe we’d even find more trouble. To be honest though, I looked forward to an easy quest for once. Of course, there was no real proof this would be easy, Gaia never held back on the surprises.
“It’s still early in the day, let’s get an inn, and relax, while we make Dan slave away creating the new grand enchantment.”
Dan knew I was joking, but he scowled anyway.
“Hey, it was your idea.”
Dan laughed, “Got me there. I’ll make the enchantment, but we’ll wait on making it bigger until we get there, I can use the scrap metal for it. Won’t that metal be scattered all over that valley, and probably the surrounding mountains?”
I nodded, “The two of us can cast an elemental. Our water and earth ones anyway, they can find and retrieve the large pieces, so we don’t have to run around ourselves. I’ll also have my elemental load the ingots on the ship, once you make them.”
Cassie said, “My air elemental can help too, it should be able to levitate and move fairly quickly.”
Steve grinned, “I can help too, zombie labor. There’s bound to be a corpse or two.”
“Sounds like we have a plan. Let’s go get a drink.”
Dan glared, “Asshole.”
Us guys laughed at that, including Dan, the women didn’t get it.
Dan said, “I think I can make improvements, you were just apprentices when you built it right? I can work in the concepts for inertial dampers. We’ll be able to accelerate at several hundred gravities. Probably overkill for atmospheric travel on a planet, but it will make trips shorter, especially stopping. Plus, we’ll be able to get out in space if we want. At several hundred gravities we could cross the solar system and back within a day.”
“That sounds really cool. How about the concepts for blocking radiation?”
Dan shrugged, “It will take me twice as long to do that, all we really need for that is to add a mana shield, that will block all energy and radiations.”
Cassie sighed, “Let’s hold off on that, I can even do it when I upgrade the air systems. I don’t think the current one will work to refresh the air in space. We’re rebuilding it again anyway at master right, no point in wasting the time. Might as well just hold off another six levels. The only real question is, does the captain have four thousand gold for us?”
Everyone laughed at that. He was in for a big surprise.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about that. Given what we just picked up recently, it might not be a bad idea to wait until grandmaster to build another ship. Every one of our grand enchantments would be that much stronger, and we could have up to six spells in each. Twelve hundred mana per gem, all doing six times the amount of work per mana.”
“Wouldn’t that reduce the power available to the disparate systems?” Gwen asked.
I nodded, “But the secondary functions could merely be useful in non-combat. Like fire for our attacks, I could probably build it with twenty gems, for a total of twenty-four thousand mana. But outside of battle it could have the life spell that made sure one of us was trying to fly it, and if it wasn’t it would trigger another spell which secured the vehicle somehow. A fourth spell could be control ice, which would make a docking connector of sorts from our back door. A fifth spell could be a life and water mix that will literally teleport the ship. A sixth spell to do something else useful, but not something that will come up in a combat situation and take mana away from the offensive systems. Hell, even just food, I could create a spell that will make fruit or vegetables, mix it with fire and the latter could appear cooked.”
Lara said, “I could make a cloaking system, also a lighting system, maybe some kind of see through display with light as a screen. I bet with light, and a lot of time, I could build a spell that will take in all the light around the ship, and build a map of the solar system, like passive sensors. I know our detections will go up as well in range, so I could probably make life sensors as well, though I’m not sure how that will work yet as far as ranges and mana costs.”
Dan said, “Flight, inertial dampers, variable sizes for the ship so we can make it grow or shrink to the size we need, I could probably even make a secondary weapon system when energy isn’t going to cut it. I could also add earth sensors, to track nearby objects that aren’t giving off light, or life signs.”
Cassie interjected, “Air deflection outside, air filtration on the inside. That won’t take very much, so I could be the one to a
dd a mana shield. Artificial gravity which would be cheap, I don’t want to be weightless in space. I’m sure we’ll think of more, we have plenty of time to plan it. If we make it house sized with our own suites, maybe an air elemental that cleans?”
“Lot of good ideas.”
It took Steve about six hours to do it. An hour and a half per stone. He was only setting one spell per stone, that’s why so fast. It was still early afternoon when he joined us in the common room, we were just lounging around and drinking. All of us had a buzz, but no one was drunk, we’d only been drinking enough to maintain it, so it didn’t take him long to catch up.
We figured it was time to get around to celebrating our leveling up and finishing off the alien quadrupeds. The ship upgrade was just a matter of minutes, and we had a quest lined up and planned out, so I was pretty relaxed.
Gwen said, “Next celebration, we take a few days to build our beach house.”
“That sounds good to me.”
It was obvious most of the clientele weren’t undying at all. Something about this city, and the even worse neighboring kingdom had made most of them take off. There might’ve been a couple in there, but not the adventuring kind.
We spent most of the rest of the day just chatting and speculating about the ship. If we did make it house-like, we could use smaller stones for cleaning elementals, baths, and even heating for ovens. We could have a cabinet full of enchantments that would create vegetables fresh for meals, and a since with a control water spell to create water. The possibilities were almost endless, if we were willing to spend about a month building it. Time was about the only daunting thing, it would all take a long time. Just the weapons grand enchantment, with all my extra ideas. Twenty gem grand enchantment times six spells? Just that was a hundred and eighty hours of work and would take me weeks.
Cleansing Fire Page 8
