Sworded Affair

Chapter 108: Dharma

[Choose 1 of 3 Attributes for your Compact Core: [3]

Rot, Glorious Rot: Your Core is steeped in the shadow of the Black Death. All who touch or behold it suffer Poison Damage, increasing with every second of exposure.

Blessing of Robin Hood: Your Core can only store items that do not belong to you.

Art is an Explosion: Your Core's storage space is increased tenfold, but can only be used to store explosives.]

"Well. That's a bit too specialised for my needs," Emma grimaced. "I'm looking more for a general storage item for everyday use, not whatever this is."

"A week's wages for that? Not particularly worthwhile," Noah concurred. "I think I can get some use out of it though, thanks to my Balefire modifiers. Why don't you lock in the third choice for both attributes, and let me cover the down payment?"

"Fine by me," Emma agreed, locking in her choices with quick presses against the relevant tablets. "No more attributes for this one."

"Wonderful! In that case, it's time to shine!"

What followed Crystal's words was hard to describe; as neither Emma nor Noah could make sense of the kaleidoscopic light emanating from the core. After what could have been a minute or a day, Emma jolted back to wakefulness. The corrosive light was gone, and she was standing under her own power, clad in armour once more; her homunculus body lay collapsed upon her summon's earthen throne, bleeding heavily from both nostrils. Thankfully, the regeneration from Saint was still active, restoring some pallor with every passing moment, or else Emma suspected she'd be looking for another homunculus already.

Noah looked a lot better despite having fallen to his knees; something largely attributed to Saint poking him repeatedly in the face, feeding him a steady stream of restorative magic.

[The crafting is done, you can retrieve the item now.]

Having received the all-clear, Emma dared look into the bowl once more: to find what had been a spherical core, transparent and otherwise devoid of definition, had undergone a significant transformation. Now, it was a dark blue set of frames, topped with twinned, pitch black lenses that swallowed any light that reached it. A set of glasses unlike any Emma had seen before; and she'd seen plenty, in a nation where over two thirds were nearsighted to some degree.

[Vision of the Doomseeker: A pair of glasses containing a storage space capable of instantaneous transfer. May contain 20/20 items, with a maximum volume of twenty cubic meters. May only store explosives. The lenses adjust to the wearer's prescription.]

"Huh. Could've been worse," Noah decided, reaching into the bowl and swapping out his store-bought spectacles for his new magic item. "Even if I never end up using the storage element, that's what, six and a half thousand pounds for a pair of glasses? Pretty expensive for sure, but not actually too bad if I can keep them for life."

Noah stood back up, taking a few wobbly steps around the room.

"Woah, that's quite the change. I was probably overdue a trip to the optician, if everything is this much clearer with a new pair of glasses."

[It's a fair deal, for a sub-optimal item. Lifespans trend longer for practitioners as well; very few reach the point of dying by old age and illness, so as long as he isn't killed in battle he's got a few centuries to look forward to.]

"Good to know," Emma murmured, even as she turned away from Noah and back to the bowl. "Where does that leave us though? We've got three hundred and fifty Thrones left; even with another five hundred from Dad, we're still in the red for a replacement core."

Another tablet appeared in an unspoken reply, this one completely blank save for three large letters written in bold at the top.

"An IOU?" Noah remarked. "Are those legally binding in the Empire?"

[No more so than poker chips at a casino table. They are reliant entirely on reputation: in this case, the reassurance that as one of the most influential beings in the Empire, I won't cheat a shopkeeper over a mere few thousand Thrones.]

A pen wasn't provided, but that wasn't an issue now that Emma was back in her true form. The tip of her armoured finger carved thin trails through the stone; not her neatest work by any measure, but still an easily legible one thousand Thrones. The tablet vanished, and there was once more a Crystalline Core in the bowl.

[Right, let's do this again. A storage item is one of the essential pieces of any practitioner's repertoire; so whilst I won't say we should aim for the very best, as that could take literal years, we should keep going until you get one you're satisfied with.]

Seeing no reason to complain, Emma dipped into her remaining coinage and tossed fifty Thrones into the bowl, starting the cycle anew. As both her and Noah leaned in, eager to see the new set of attributes, neither of them noticed as Saint vanished from the latter's shoulders, heading on her own adventure to parts unknown.

---

Meanwhile, in what was once Cambridge.

There was disagreement here, once upon a time. Raucous, reckless, and raw in the manner only found in that most savage of battlefields: academia. Tempers flared, insults were levied, and three scholars even died before a good chunk of the gobsmacked crowd decided to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Oxford was the University, in those days, Cambridge would see the founding of the second. The first offspring, and the first defier; there's a weight to such moments, even eight centuries gone by.

Cambridge is gone, just a crater left to mourn her: the legacy of too many students, teachers and tourists, raising the population until it reached six digits and more. No more cathedrals, halls of learning, or homes for the many. Just a single cottage torn out of time, a sleeping beauty in an armchair, and a fat orange cat curled up happily in her lap.