NOVEL NEXT Chapter 75 – Research
Late in the evening, Emily drops her head on the desk, growling in frustration.
“Wrong again,” she whines into the hard wood.
Her attempts so far to create a sealing array have proven completely fruitless. Having begun by testing with a fire crystal and two attributed streams of her own mana to figure out the balance of light, fire, and lightning needed to best restrain the baleful aura of the tooth, she used the result to try to weave together a tri-element seal. However, the first twenty-five combinations all failed, even though they each required over twenty minutes of painstakingly carving tiny, intricate runes and geometric shapes onto a test plate of white iron.
“You know what they say, twenty-sixth time's the charm,” Emily grumbles as she sits up, staring at the test plate, covered in faintly glowing lines filled with crystal dust.
She frowns as she pulses mana through the plate, forcing the crystal dust to dislodge so she can brush it off.
“Tsk,” she clicks her tongue. “I already need to use The Clock and it’s only my first day back,” she mutters, frustrated at the materials she’s wasted with her experiments.
Shaking her head, she starts injecting metal mana into the white iron, forcibly pushing mass back into the empty space created by the engravings. The small plate of metal soon returns to being a blank slate, so Emily picks up her engraving tool again, pressing the pointed tip into the metal. She pours a steady stream of unattributed mana into the tool and starts the slow process of drawing another array.
Her steady hand flows through the motions, changing the blank metal plate into a miniature work of art. After she’s happy with the engraving, Emily places down her tool and reaches for three ramekins filled with fire, light, and lightning crystal dust. Carefully, she sprinkles the dust into the channels on the metal, filling certain runes with certain elements, mixing the powders at some points and keeping them separated at others.
The last particles of crystal dust fall into place, completing the test piece and releasing a small pulse of warm mana. Pushing aside the containers of dust, Emily takes a deep breath to calm her expectations and lifts the ovoid of metal and tooth above the plate.
“The moment of truth,” she mutters as she places it down in a prepared groove at the centre of the array.
The moment the two white iron surfaces make contact, the black and red mana leaking from the Mensacus is pulled downwards into the array and small streams of multicoloured mana reach up. The warm glow of fire meets the miasma first, biting at it and forcing it to halt its advance. The bright wave of light behind draws in the miasma, pulling some of it past the fire’s line of defence and smothering it. Then, the cold crackle of lightning assaults the miasma, ripping it apart and mixing with it, pulling it helplessly into the array.
“Yes!” Emily cheers with delight when she sees the corrupted mana successfully blend into her design.
Finally, it worked! Now I have a sealing array that fuels itself using the object it’s sealing!
Grinning madly, she leans back in her chair, satisfied. After enjoying her achievement for a few minutes, Emily calms down and considers how to save resources.
I need to reset to save all the crystals I wasted testing, but I don’t really want to have to remake the metal shell for the seal. I’ll wait till tomorrow before I reset then. I can use the rest of today to look at how the corrupted mana affected black iron.
She pushes the sealed Mensacus aside and pulls the chunks of decayed black iron out of the drawer, preparing to study them.
“Ah.” She pauses. “I should probably spend some time with Jules, or she’ll be knocking on my door and I’ll have to deal with a grumpy girlfriend for the rest of this loop.”
***
The next day Emily resets with a notebook full of extra information on sealing arrays and corrupted mana. She returns to the moment the white iron shell around the Mensacus finishes cooling.
“Right, time to do this for real.”
She grabs her engraving tool again, along with three empty ramekins and three mana crystals of different elements. She quickly destabilises and disintegrates all three before setting about the gruelling task of carving her array design onto the glistening white ovoid before her.
She pulls up the design in her notes, pulling the shape and stretching it from a flat plane to perfectly wrap the egg of metal, then starts tracing the lines with extreme precision. Slowly and carefully, she forms the dizzying matrix of angles and shapes into the metal, without making a single mistake, her steady hand never slipping and her focus unrelenting. After forty minutes of careful engraving, she pulls back and inspects the pattern one last time before giving a satisfied nod.
Finally, she fills the engravings with crystal powders, bringing the seal to life and trapping the cursed tooth’s influence. She smiles once the seal is complete, picking up the warm-to-the-touch metal egg and checking her stats. Her intelligence remains the same, signalling her success.
“One cursed object dealt with!” she says proudly before a greedy grin slips onto her lips. “Now, time to learn about spatial enchantments!”
While looking in the library for sealing spells, Emily also checked for information on spatial storage items, seeing if she could make one for herself. However, she found none of the books in the B-grade section held any information on the runes and arrays needed to actually make spatial items. So, she decided to take matters into her own hands.
Checking the time so she won’t reset to before completing the seal again, Emily pulls her market token out of the desk drawer. Browsing through the options, she selects a few different types of storage items and places orders for them, draining her points quickly. Her points fall below two hundred after buying five spatial items of varying prices, so she stands up and leaves her room, heading to the hub to collect them.
The clerk that serves her gives her a look of confusion mixed with envy as she collects her purchases, and she soon settles back in her room to inspect the items. Rubbing her hands together in excitement, she places the most complicated storage item in the centre of the desk. It’s a thick bracelet with a body made from a mix of black and white iron, similar to Jenny’s but far less artistic. Also, unlike Jenny’s, it has four lesser space crystals embedded around it, allowing for a large space within.
¯¯¯¯¯
[Spatial Storage Bracelet]
[Rank:] D
[Description:] A bracelet containing a holder-locked pocket dimension.
[Effect:] Allows the user to freely access a seven-metre cubed pocket dimension.
_____
“Hmmm, it’s the same rank as Oscar’s temporary bags. I guess the size of storage space is what determines rank?” Emily mumbles, glancing at the other items on her desk and finding all of them only ranked E.
“Yeah, thought so.”
Turning her focus back to the boringly named bracelet, she closes her eyes and probes it with her magical senses. She follows the mana flow from the crystals through the surrounding runes, observing the strange twisting of space and mana. However, as she inspects the spell, she starts feeling a burning pain in her cortex and her perception is forced back.
¯¯¯¯¯
User has taken damage from intense mental strain.
-20 hp
_____
A trickle of blood runs down her chin, which she quickly wipes while frowning at the bracelet.
“Damn, I was hoping that wouldn’t happen,” she mutters with a sigh, pushing the bracelet aside. “I hope these aren’t all above second circle.”
Emily tries the next storage item, a D rank holder-locked ring, and receives another backlash.
“Ah, fuck!” She clasps her head as a splitting pain runs through it and blood drips from her eyes.
It takes ten minutes for the pain to fade, and she decides not to try another item without healing first. She moves away from her desk, settling down on her bed and meditating for a few hours, letting the flow of mana and machina slowly soothe her damaged cortex. Her health rises quickly, much faster than when recovering from physical injuries, and soon she returns to her desk to try again.
Let’s work from the bottom up instead.
Emily grabs a small silken pouch with a glistening purple crystal attached at the drawstring, and threads stitched around it to form runes.
Well that’s an interesting alternative to engraving.
¯¯¯¯¯
[Small Storage Pouch]
[Rank:] E
[Description:] A drawstring pouch containing an expanded space.
[Effect:] Holds a freely accessible, one-metre cubed pocket dimension.
_____
She focuses on her magical senses, falling into the inner workings of the twisted space within the bag. She receives no resistance from the item this time, and comfortably falls into a trance of observation, tracing the weavings of the spell and filling her notes with fresh data and runes.
After extracting every piece of useful information from the bag in a passive state, she starts observing it while passing items in and removing them, analysing the process in detail. It takes a full hour for Emily to be satisfied with her notes from the pouch and to toss it aside. Next, she tries the next lowest rank item, an E-rank holder-locked necklace with one-metre squared of space.
As she starts investigating it, she starts to feel pushback, although not as forceful as with the others, but she still can’t fully analyse the spell’s workings. She clicks her tongue in frustration, but still spends an hour trying to skirt around the backlash.
Emily’s fascinated by the changes in rune form that binds the item to a single user. She extracts as much information, about the runes involved and the changes made to them, from the necklace as possible. After finishing with it, she glances at the last item on her desk, a D ranked pouch.
I think this is gonna hurt, but only one way to confirm.
She closes her eyes and pushes her magical senses into the bag, but feels immediate, violent pushback. Instantly, she withdraws her senses, opening her eyes to a slight ache in her head, but only a few points of damage.
“Okay. So, anything D ranked and above is too advanced for me to analyse right now. At least I know I can pull out before receiving the full backlash even on higher ranked scans. I just have to recognise the signs of it happening quickly,” she mutters to herself disappointedly. “There go my plans for making expensive spatial items. I guess I’ll have to move on to spells sooner than expected.”
Emily’s disappointment doesn’t last long, as the moment she thinks about collecting more free spells, she quickly bounces back. She spends the rest of the reset designing and testing spells for a spatial storage item. She activates The Clock again the next day, returning to a few seconds after finishing the Mensacus’ seal.
She leaves her room, making her way back to the hub.
“Hello, how can I help you?” the clerk behind the counter asks as she approaches.
“How many first and second circle fire spells do you sell?” Emily asks back with an excited grin.
***
The next morning, after finishing her business in frozen time, Emily joins her friends for breakfast. They eat as Emily tells them about the expedition in detail, and as they’re all getting up to leave, Emily stops Ivor.
“Hey, big guy. Are you free to look at the shadow boa today?” she asks excitedly.
“Sure!” he signs back with a smile. “Should I book a lab for us to use for a few days?”
“Ah, you can do that?” Emily asks in surprise.
“Yeah. The labs are open for private research for a small daily fee.”
“Oh, cool. Let me know how much it costs, and I’ll pay half. Shall we go after lunch?”
“Sounds good. See you later,” Ivor signs before stepping into a transportation room.
Emily waits for a few seconds before entering the empty room herself.
I guess I can work on my creations for the morning then! Actually… I should probably look at my class schedule again and work out which lessons I still want to go to.
“Urgh,” she groans at the thought as she warps through space.
***
Once again back at her desk, Emily pulls out her class list token and injects some mana, opening the menu in her mind to browse. She navigates to the current class tab and reviews her timetable.
I think I’ll skip today’s magic combat. I want a little more time to process which of these new spells I actually want to integrate into my fighting. I’m not too sure the class will be very helpful for me from now on. I think sparring with Agnes would be a better way to spend my time. I should find a way to get her to give me a few hours a week again, then drop magic combat.
She sits back, biting her thumb as she contemplates and taps the fingers of her other hand rhythmically on the desk.
My next lesson with her is tomorrow, so I can try to talk to her then. I’m sure she’ll want a spar after my return from The Glade to see if I’ve improved, and I have a lot of new toys to try out.
She smirks at the thought of her newly filled spellbook and navigates to the available courses tab next.
Let’s see… Artefact crafting sounds interesting: an intermediate or advanced class that requires engraving, magic theory, and beast studies. It could be useful for messing with the Mensacus. I’m signing up.
She registers for the class straight away and notes the next lesson will be in a week.
Alright, next is arrays. I should probably go to at least one lesson to see if it's different from my individual research, but I don’t think it will be that helpful. Spell creation... Hmmm… Yeah, that could be useful to see their method.
The two classes are added to her list, and she closes out the course list, satisfied for now.
“Nothing else looks interesting,” she mutters to herself, turning around and staring at the damaged equipment on her workbench. “Now, let’s get some repairs done so I can be at my best for Agnes tomorrow!”