The moment the battle ended, I had returned to my private forge, and started creating spearheads. The reason I worked alone was the speed of my forging, which increased once more after my most recent level-up. However, it also meant that, even the slightest mishap could be deadly to other blacksmiths.
Also, it made getting confidential reports easier. They found me at the forge, delivering the explanation. I didn’t stop forging, choosing to multitask.
Some reports, like a number of farmers who had managed to surpass level seventy, or the success of Logan’s team in clearing a small silver mine nearby, were nice and promising.
Others, like the recent report I had received about one of our aid teams being ambushed by a roaming group of corrupted monsters, killed to the last man, barely able to send news of their demise, were a stab to my guts. Another sign of my failure. If only…
Then, there were concerning reports. Like the one, Rosie was delivering the last words of it. “… And the first legion, the true elite of Drakka, has been seen moving toward Asterion. The siege is only heating up. What should we do?”
I sighed, trying to ignore the knot in my throat. “We expected Drakka to be allied with heretics, and we made our preparations for it. This is just confirmation. There’s nothing we need to do.”
“But —” Rosie started.
I cut her off. “Damn it. I know we need to do something, but we’re stretched to the limit, then more. We don’t have any reserves. Not the kind that could matter in a battle like that.” Then, I passed, taking a deep breath. Rosie didn’t deserve my anger. “My apologies. The stress is getting to me.”
“No, I understand,” Rosie said, patting my shoulder. “We have gotten used to coming to you, expecting you to pull another miracle from your pockets. It’s not fair.”
I sighed. “Fairness doesn’t matter, Rosie. We all want the same thing. It’s just…”
“How long since you have a rest,” Rosie asked.
I shrugged. “Sometime before all this mess started.” She frowned and grabbed my wrist, stopping the hammer. “What are you doing. You’re going to ruin the tempering of the metal.”
“Come with me,” Rosie said. “You need to take a rest.”
“I don’t. With my vitality, I can continue working for at least another week before I need a rest.”
Rosie kept her hand in place. “It’s not your body I’m worried about, but your mind. You’re under too much weight, Devon. If you don’t give yourself some time, you’ll shatter.”
She was wrong. “I can’t stop, Rosie. Not when any weapon I crafted saves a dozen lives.”
“And, your presence keeps everyone safe,” she countered. “What do you think would happen if you burn out? Do you think someone else could even hope to stabilize the situation if you’re out of commission, even for a few hours?”
“I — I can’t,” I muttered, feeling a deep suffocation, the kind that I only felt while flying. I tried to breathe … and failed.
“Take a deep breath, and let it go,” she whispered, suddenly at my side, rubbing my neck. “You’re having a panic attack.”
I couldn’t breathe, but somehow, a chuckle escaped my mouth. “I-impossible.”
“Just follow my directions. Take a deep breath, and release…” she continued. I stopped thinking, and followed her directions, breathing and counting. Sometime later, likely a minute or two, which felt like an hour, the suffocating weight dissipated.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Thanks,” I said as I forced myself to stand. “Maybe resting for a few minutes wouldn’t be too much. I could go and fight —”
“No,” she cut in. “Nothing that will require you to use your skills,” she said. “I have read your research, and it’s clear that the more you use the abilities, the stronger the impact on the soul.”
“Yeah, but that’s not really relevant to me,” I replied. “My soul strength could handle it. There had been times I worked for weeks non-stop.”
“Not when you’re almost level ninety, and not while balancing a Legendary skill and two dungeons,” she said. “Just think what you would have said if Terry came with the same excuse…”
A deep breath escaped my mouth. When she put it like that, I could see the problem. “Fine, but I’ll still work,” I said.
Rosie giggled. “That much, I expected. Should I bring you a blueprint or two so you can audit them?”
“No,” I said. Instead, I opened a nearby drawer, containing a long report, easily a thousand pages. “I’ll go over Spencer’s latest discoveries.”
“That’s a choice,” Rosie said. “Do you really believe that it’ll work? Maybe we should channel them to a different task. We already have too few people with Intelligence. Having them scouring scouting reports to catch problems might be more useful.”
“It’s a promising direction,” I replied. “I know that there’s a good chance it’ll fail, but it doesn’t matter.”
“Because even if they fail, they will be very familiar with spell structure, something we’re woefully inadequate in. At worst, they’ll be better casters.”
“And what are the other options?”
“There’s a spectrum,” I said even as I started to read the report, Wisdom helping to memorize the whole page at a glance. I told Rosie I wouldn’t use my skills, but Stats, especially passive benefits, were different. “The best case is to find some kind of catch-all formula, explaining how every spell works.”
“And, you think that’s likely?”
“God, no,” I responded with a chuckle. “That’s a tempting idea, but ultimately, it’s as likely as us proving unified field theory while sitting here. I strongly doubt that it’s something we can find?”
She frowned. “But? Isn’t that the whole point?”
“No, we just need a formula that works approximately. It doesn’t need to be comprehensive.”
She frowned. “What’s the difference?”
“Think of it this way. If I’m trying to forge a bridge to cover ten yards, I just have to calculate the amount of metal I require, and that would be it. If I tried to build a bridge ten miles long, I had to calculate a lot of variables, from the impact of the wind to the weight of the metal. And, that would be completely different if I wanted to build a building that’s tall. Theoretically, they are all impacted by the same factors.”
“But, in practice, you can ignore most of them,” she completed.
“Yes. The simpler the spell structure, the more flexibility we have … well, at least, that’s the hypothesis. There’s a chance I have to rethink everything based on a surprise realization…”
“Devon. You just have a weird expression on your face. Are you sick? Is it the System’s backlash or something?” Rosie asked.
”Give me a minute,” I said, frowning as I cycled through the papers I had already read, pulled two pages, and combined them with the one I read. “I might have something.”
Two of the pages represented summaries of certain spell variables, measuring the spell stability based on spatial rune placement.
At this point of our research, we were able to isolate most of the simpler rune components, which included main categories like shape, speed, target, and interaction with environmental mana; with the research focusing on creating a more reliable method of turning them into spells that didn’t require skill guidance.
That was critical if we were to ever apply casting in a larger scheme. Especially since I was trying to weaponize something as rare as decay magic, which was rather useless without Wisdom support, and volatile when empowered.
It hadn’t helped by the fact that decay unraveled the supporting runes designed to control the spells.
Yet, for some reason, the last report I read tickled my mind. Something was different in it. Something was … wrong. No, not wrong, I corrected myself. It didn’t fit the data.
It was a simple growth spell, converted to a ranged bolt attack. That much was not a surprise, as since most of the researchers were converted from Farmers, growth spells were the easiest ones to experiment. But, that particular report had shown a spell that was more stable than the others, even to the identical ones.
The temptation was there to dismiss that as an accident, but that was the method of a mediocre researcher. True that most of the outliers were mere mistakes in methodology, and dismissing them from checking would be the correct move almost all the time.
However, the rare exceptions were the ones that triggered progress.
I turned to Rosie. “Do you mind fetching Spencer with you? Also, ask him to bring whoever authored this particular report,” I said and passed the report.
It was worth following.