We had been teleported to a waiting room shortly after the Titan's death. Apparently, everybody left the arena at the same time, so we had to wait for other groups to finish.
"So you were going to go over how your circuits are designed then?" Hazel asked the moment we appeared in the room. All of her previous enthusiasm had returned, and her eyes practically sparkled with curiosity."We’re just going to skip over your display of power back there?" I asked in return. Despite having no interest in using hand gestures to cast spells, I couldn’t discount the results. As long as I didn’t have to start naming moves, I might survive the cringe."That was my presumption, yes. Didn’t you already offer earlier?" Her tone was matter-of-fact.
"That I did, yes…" I replied with a sigh. I saw little room to argue the point because I did offer, and it would be rather rude of me to go back on my word. Just adequate at fighting, right? Okay. I’ll believe you, sure."What was that?" She asked, and I jumped, not having realized I murmured that out loud."Nothing, anyways. Let’s get started." I began designing circuits out of wire, held aloft mid-air while still attached to me so that she could see the individual parts while explaining what I was doing each step. Barely half a minute in, while trying to demonstrate the basics, Hazel had already interrupted me."No, that doesn’t make sense. You can’t just channel Mana into a shape and expect it to do something like it’s math." She said when I started to create a basic output array."Well, obviously, intent also kind of matters if you’re trying to amplify certain properties. I mean, you can sidestep that requirement but..." Before I finished the sentence, I was interrupted again."Mana doesn’t hold intent. You can shape your will into it, sure, but that doesn’t mean it has an intent," She explained, somehow more frustrated over my explanation than before.I just looked at her, a mix of disbelief and frustration passing over my face, and shook my head. "We’ve both only been here for one day. This is how my magic works, so either listen or don’t."It was her turn to sigh. "Sorry, I was imparted over two hundred years' worth of progress on magic and its related topics. You’re currently telling me to take all the rules I’ve been shown through the impartment and throw them out in exchange for new ones. I have to wonder if Li Wei gave me the entire truth about what this was supposed to be, though everything I’ve tried has worked so far." She began to massage her temples and sat down on the ground.Sitting down next to her, I considered what that meant. "The guy who had the absolutely worst day ever? What does he… Oh, we’ve got a reincarnator in Eternia, or is he stuck in a time loop?""What? Yes, he’s explained it as him being in a time loop. How did you guess?" She asked.
I just gave her a long look and moved on, deciding to spare her the infodump on my last hyperfixation. "Have you ever taken a look at the functionality of artifacts before?""What? Oh, you mean items, right? Channel Mana into them, and they do something. They’re fairly straightforward, as far as I can tell. Nobody has been able to replicate one of them, though, which makes what you’re doing ridiculous. The assumption is they’re system-generated. Even trying to replicate the internals exactly as is results in nothing happening." Hazel explained, "I thought you were doing something different in your body that I could find out how to work with.""Do you have any blueprints stored in that impartment of yours?" I asked, hoping to find a reason behind the issue. There’s probably something I can learn from where she went wrong after all. I began creating a pile of Groveheart root material for her to use.
"Yes, a few simple ones I can try," She mumbled, then picked up the root and used a spell to shape it how she wanted. The root material seemed to stretch and bend into the shape of a very simple artifact. "All this does is accept unattuned Mana and release it from the end." She grabbed what was clearly the input side and sent a pulse of Mana into the simple artifact. Her Mana didn’t move through the material at all.I picked up the simple circuit and tried to connect with it like a regular artifact, but it didn’t respond as one at all. So, I dropped it into my Inventory to check what the issue was.[Fake Pulse Wand]
Pulse wand that has been built out of material destroyed by a mage’s authority.
"You broke it with your authority while shaping it," I said, a little disappointed. "The material just couldn’t handle how your Mana interacted with the natural Mana inside it." I knew this was a problem already. I’d nearly been destroyed by a similar problem when I landed on the awful lawn just by the lizard woman casually talking to herself near me."Oh." Her face shifted into an unreadable expression.I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. So I consumed the broken wand to check what she had specifically done to it. All of the bonds usually contained within the material were broken or ripped into pieces that didn’t connect to each other in any meaningful way. I assumed crafting classes would imbue their authority into items they craft as well, destroying the conductivity unless they planned in advance to maintain it somehow.
"Who’s Eryx?" Hazel finally asked after an uncomfortably long silence.
"What do you mean? A god? How do you even know the name?" I asked.
"I was just offered a profession. It’s called ‘Inspired Apprentice Mekanist,’ and it mentions a disciple of Eryx teaching me about artificery." She continued, "If they're a god, I won’t pry, nasty business working with them." No fair! I’ve been working away at his damn puzzles for ages now. Why does she get the profession option from barely an introduction?
I expressed this thought to Hazel and received an explanation. Apparently, I’m potentially lined up to receive a higher-Tier profession, so the system is waiting for me to either achieve that or give up before it gives me another option. I guess I need to complete the ring sooner rather than later, as that’s the only thing I can think of that would hold me back from getting a profession. I bet there’s something juicy at the end of the line. I glanced into my Inventory towards the ring, intending to take a crack at it and realized as I checked that I had forgotten entirely about something. Wasting no time I examined the box I snagged in the scary house.
[Distributor Relay]
An artifact containing the central hub of a spatial relay. Processes Mana signals and outputs them to connected devices by harnessing a mixture of Communication and Space Mana generated from the nexus node of an Astral Echo.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
WHAT?
I pulled the item out immediately, ignoring Hazel jumping out of her own skin and squeaking from the presence that filled the room from the item’s existence alone. I immediately connected with the artifact to find out how to get it working. I felt my Mana vibrate with excitement, and so many ideas immediately came to mind about what I could use this for.
My Core processed the information, and I intuitively understood how to add connections to it. This was a fairly simple process. The artifact itself seemed to handle the complex part through some sort of processing system that I couldn’t replicate even with a knife held to my Core. The materials alone didn’t make sense to me, not to mention the sheer density of the circuitry.
"Where the fuck did you get a Tyrannical Tier item?" Hazel asked while trying to control her breathing. "And why isn’t it affecting you at all? Gods, it feels like something is pulling my Mana out of alignment with my body just being near it."
I had to chuckle at her reaction. The artifact was like a gentle tickle compared to the lizard lady’s presence that I had run into. "Oh yeah, it's a funny story actually, so after barely escaping with my life from a firestorm multiple kilometres across, I ———" Attempting to mention landing on the lawn led to my words being so distorted they came out completely unrecognizable. Hazel gave me an odd look. "Hmm, sorry, let me try that again ——" Mentioning Veranox by name came out as the noise of a piano falling down the stairs. "No idea why but I can’t tell you, anyways feel free to hold on to this if you ever need to contact me about artificery advice."
I threw her a small bauble I had been growing in my hand connected to the relay. It was spatially linked to the relay, basically sharing the same Communication Mana to pass signals.
"You produced a Wrought Tier item in less than a minute?" Hazel asked, examining the communicator I gave her. I had already installed a second one into my head, with a gate between it and my audio processing unit, obviously. I wasn’t giving anyone unrestricted access to chat with me. I wasn’t that much of a social butterfly. In fact, I’m usually not one to spend much time with people at all, unless they bulldoze themselves into my life like Hazel did. I then put away the artifact so Hazel could stop sweating profusely.
"It’s probably just because the original artifact is such a high Tier. If that only came out as Wrought, then I probably left some inefficiencies in there that brought the quality down. Also, how are you getting the Tier of all these items?" I asked, hoping it wasn’t a spell of some kind.
"Oh, [Identify] is a Human Skill. I forgot you wouldn’t know about it." She replied, dashing my dreams.Of course, it's limited to Humans. Why wouldn't it be?
"Man, the more I learn about you guys, the more unfair it feels. By the way, I wanted to ask how large the experience buff you…" My voice died in my throat as a notification appeared in front of me.
[Returning to Original Location In 1 Minute]
"Ah… Well, it has been a nice life so far. I’ll have to say my final goodbye, though," I said in a solemn tone. I won't be going back to Fateswatch after this, then… I always kind of knew that was going to happen. I just wanted to delude myself. It’s not like Veranox wasn’t going to break open an artifact with no Space Mana that disappears from their shelf and reappears three hours later to find out what it’s doing. It would clearly show that I had cold-gapped some circuits, too.
"What, why?" Hazel asked, a mix of concern and confusion entering her voice.
I chuckled dryly. "I can’t actually tell you. Do you remember the earlier thing? That." I was so getting killed the moment I reappeared in the building. "If — let me live, I’ll contact you. I don’t think it’s very likely, though. But you never know. Maybe I’ll get lucky." The sentiment was only slightly spoiled by the sound of a dog dying when I tried to refer to the two I met using ‘they’. I wasn’t sure what it was trying to block with that. Maybe the fact that there was more than one of them?
Hazel wore a complicated expression: "I’ll talk to you soon if you make it out. You promised to teach me about artifacts, so you have to live through whatever it is, okay?"
I gave her a sad smile. "Promise is a strong word, but I appreciate the sentiment."
I felt the pull of the teleport activating and waved Hazel goodbye. She waved back, an adorable pout on her face as she mumbled something I couldn’t quite catch.
I didn’t have time to poke fun at her for that fact before I was pulled into a black void. Not even my body appeared with my consciousness. This hasn’t happened before. I tried to check my Inventory but couldn’t get a response. It’s like I had just fallen off the planet and out of existence at the same time. Oh shit the boundary, she mentioned something about there being some kind of barrier, is the teleport trying to force me back in? Would it time out if it fails, and if it does time out, what happens?
I couldn’t decide if I wanted the teleport to succeed or not. Either I’m trapped in a black void forever with nothing to take my mind off things, or I’m sent to the worst possible hell for me specifically… Actually, this is probably it. This is the hell they would put me in, isn't it? I tried to move, to spin in place, pull up the system menu, and do anything at all, but nothing responded to my attempts. It’s not like I had claustrophobia or anything. It's more the fact that my mind is going to eat itself alive in less than twenty-four hours.
An indeterminate amount of time later, while stewing in my misery, I decided to try out my last option, prayer. I had mostly prayed as a way to get a chuckle previously. I mean, there are actual gods who might as well send them tech support requests. But really, they designed this damn this and I'm stuck in their fucking teleporter. I first tried all the gods watching, getting no response, then any gods willing to listen, nothing again.
Ah, what was that guy’s name again? I couldn’t pull up the system log to check so I just went through a list of names until I found the one. Uhhh, Kalzor heed my prai… No, Kolzaer? Nope, Kaelzar? Something rapidly began draining from me, something I needed that I couldn’t get back. I desperately stopped the prayer and plugged the drain, then let out a deep sigh internally. Let’s put that on the ‘if this doesn’t fix itself by the time I want to bash my head into a wall’ solution list.
Somebody, please delete my save file and reset the game. I've hit a hard lock in my game file.
Just as I finished that thought, a notification appeared in my vision.
[Teleporter Timeout In 300 Minutes]
I wanted to sob. Was this divine intervention in my tech support issue—because, let’s be real, that’s happened before with tech—or was the timing just random chance?
While waiting, my thoughts began to spin as they usually do when I have nothing to focus on other than myself. What happens when the timer hits zero? Do I just get ejected straight to hell? No game over, do not pass GO? What if it succeeds before the teleport timer hits zero, and I just get out back in the artifact room with Veranox? Do I even want it to succeed? Where do I go if not hell when it fails? Would I be sent to the zero-zero coordinate on the map? Presumably, that would be Fateswatch, but I’m not letting my hopes up only to be dashed twice. At least not intentionally this time. I could be sent under the map if it’s actually three coordinate points at position zero. Would I just fall forever, then? It’s not like I need food or light or sleep to survive, so would that be much different from right now?
Well, obviously, it would be. I’d get to play games on my ring. So that isn’t going to happen. Knocked two scenarios out of the possibilities already. Cool, we’re working through some stuff here. Making progress, ya know?
As I watched the timer countdown, not much happened. Every minute felt like an individual eternity I had to sit through. A watched pot never boils? Why don’t we shove the pot in your vision and not move it for five hours? Great design, guys—really great.
Hours later, while trying to distract myself from watching the time and despairing, I noticed something that hadn’t been there before: a tiny dot somewhere far off in the distance.