Chapter 201, 1/2

Chapter 201, 1/2

Erick started the day with an omelet, pancakes, and bacon, eaten on the porch as he watched the sunrise over Candlepoint. He had made his own breakfast as he sometimes did, while making more for Poi, Kiri, and Teressa, for when they eventually woke. Those were under preservation [Ward]s, for now.

He was alone, save for Ophiel and Yggdrasil, and a daily report from Zolan.

It was yesterday’s end of day summary, but it was more than that. Later in the report were the goals for today and the goals for the following weeks and months. There were even some long standing goals for the far future listed on page 3, the last page. ‘Open new worlds’ was the final entry. These reports were a nice way to start the day.

Zolan had made reports like this for Kirginatharp, and it was all too easy for Zolan to start making the same sorts of reports for Erick. Erick didn’t even have to request such reports. Zolan was simply good enough to know that reports needed to be made.

Today’s report seemed special, though. Almost all of the news was simply reports on what the other overseers were working on; current projects and the like, and how far along they were. Only two entries in the beginning had any sort of bearing on Erick’s plans for today.

Volaro had finally wrapped up the story of the meat thieves, putting to rest the problems with the disappearing livestock from last month. It had taken a while for Burhendurur and Slip to uncover and locate the 21 people who had been poaching from Candlepoint, but only a few days to capture them. Those people had been in confinement for a little while, and now, their trial was done.

Apparently, those 21 people were one great big extended family and their father had been exiled from the Wasteland for political issues, and the kids were the people who stole the livestock. They were terrified of the Wizard, but they felt they had no other choice but to steal to survive, and then they accidentally overcompensated in their theft. ‘They didn’t mean to steal that much, they swore!’ That was their story, anyway.

The outcome of the trial was an offer to join the ranch and work for the food they wanted, or exile, with the threat that being caught again was execution. It was a rather lenient sentence, all things considered.

Volaro’s official decree was that the defendants were lying about something, but that didn’t matter. If they proved to be good citizens, then he didn’t care if they lied (and Erick didn’t either, for he had been consulted before the final decree came down). Most of the chickens and cows were back with Daetroi, anyway, and in a few days, Daetroi would get 19 more people to work at the ranch.

Actually getting the livestock back didn’t mean much besides how it looked, politically, to protect Candlepoint from even the smallest of threats.

Erick had ‘solved’ the problem of not having enough meat options in town weeks ago; he had made Zolan figure it out. Zolan’s solution was to put Daetroi in contact with his own Wasteland contacts in order to buy more animals. The ranch had gotten more livestock within two days after that. And now, with 19 more people working under him, Daetroi and the other ranchers were no longer overworked.

Those 19 people hadn’t even stepped on the ranch yet, but Daetroi was glad to get them.

There was also a bit of news about the dungeons.

Mox’s Stone dungeon and Air dungeon were both starting to produce slimes, while the Water dungeon was ramping up to capacity. The Fire dungeon was still waiting for its first slimes, but that was normal. Fire dungeons took a long time to get going. The Light dungeon was on hold, because of Erick’s previous agreement with Kirginatharp to not do another Light dungeon for 10 years, but they had broken ground on the Shadow dungeon four nights ago. The shadelings Mox had hired for that area were working well. There was still no overt sign of Melemizargo down in those dark, damp tunnels, but he was still very much there, of course. Melemizargo was inside every darkened corner of every part of Veird. The Shadow dungeon might produce some good slimes in a month.

The Benevolence dungeon was a tower and a pit (since no one was quite sure which was best) situated to the north of the Gate District. It was ready for Erick’s experimentation, but he had been too busy to do much of that recently.

And that was it for current events!

A single report on the meat thieves, and a notice that Mox was ready for Erick to try his hand at making a Benevolence dungeon. Everything else was long term, from Zolan speaking with Songli to get a hookup to the Gate Network, to overtures of the same to Spur, to Aisha working on turning iron into viable magical metal, and other things.

Even the Benevolence dungeon wasn’t that much of a priority, because esoteric dungeons almost never worked. Erick was still going to try, though.

And so, since Erick didn’t have any necessary meetings, or anything like that...

What to do?

Time Magic with Phagar? A Boon from Rozeta? Or working on Benevolence? Or even making himself into more of a Wizard, with forceful accretion? He could even have a talk on dragons with Burhendurur and/or Volaro.

Erick smiled as he considered his possibilities—

Poi joined Erick on the porch, carrying his own breakfast.

“Morning, Poi!” Erick happily asked, “Any news I should know about?”

“Nothing I can think of.” Poi asked, “What do you want to do today?”

Smiling again, Erick asked himself, “What do I want to do today? I think...”

Erick took a look around his kingdom.

... And it was doing alright. People were already out at the market. Goods were coming through the Stratagold Gates, stopping at customs, and then moving either to parts unknown, or moving through a Gate that led across the Gate Road, to the Wayfarer’s Guildhouse. The people at that guildhouse then moved goods to buyers all across the Crystal Forest. Some of that stuff was even headed toward Spur.

Stuff was headed out, but stuff was also headed in, appearing in the center of the Wayfarer’s guildhouse and then moving through a Gate to the other side of the Gate Road, to Stratagold’s property, where it moved through more Gates and into the Underworld.

Stuff was also headed through Gates that led to Candlepoint, where another Wayfarer’s office had set up down the road from Market Street. People in Candlepoint were buying goods from the lands around Stratagold, while the lands around Stratagold were buying all sorts of foods that grew best up here, or fabrics from the spidery, or meat from the ranch.

The world was moving through Erick’s [Gate]s, and it was good.

It wasn’t much right now, but the volume was increasing daily.

Surprisingly enough, Erick had only ever had to recast a [Gate] into one of the Gates once, and only because someone was doing some very drunk shipping and rammed into the side of the Gate with a million ton shipment of pure white marble, multiple times. The first ramming didn’t budge the physical Gate at all, but the second ramming actually managed to move the glowing white square and break the [Gate] on the inside.

Aside from that recast, which took all of ten minutes to do, Erick’s Gate Network was working well. House Benevolence was doing pretty good, too. All of Erick’s overseers were doing their jobs, and they were doing them well. This whole organization ran like a clunky old car trying to turn over in cold weather, but everyone was warming up to each other, and Burhendurur (and even Goldie, in three instances) had stopped every single fight between House members before they got too bad.

This whole thing worked.

It worked well.

Zolan had given Erick his first month financial review just the other week. Even though Erick was bleeding money like a strung-up cow in order to pay everyone’s wages and otherwise, he could survive another 2 years of paying for everything all on his own.

If he did a monster hunt for 2 days, once a year, and transferred all those rads to Mage Bank, House Benevolence could survive indefinitely. According to some very lucrative offers, handed to Zolan in the strictest of confidences, if Erick started selling [Reincarnation]s then he would never have to worry about the House or the Gate Network turning a profit, ever.

But having a Gate Network was going to be very profitable, eventually. Just needed about 6 more months to really get there. As people started to realize that Erick wasn’t scary at all, and that yes, he really was allied with all the major powers of the world, the amount of money coming out of the Gate Network would break even with how much money Erick was spending on the House.

When he opened the next land, though, the profit would come rolling in like an avalanche.

If he got the next Gate set up and running, anyway.

Songli was dragging their heels. Tentatively, Erick might be opening up [Gate]s over there in the next week, but Zolan was still in talks with Holorulo regarding specifics. Might be a week! Might be a month. Or two or three. Erick had tried to be a part of those talks, but he scared off the people on Holorulo’s side of the table. Which was... What it was. Erick didn’t even know the people who Holorulo had sent, so it didn’t matter to him to miss that meeting, which was odd.

Holorulo hadn’t sent anyone whom Erick had known.

At the current rate, Erick might be opening up a [Gate] to Spur, next.

But that was for later! For today, Erick had nothing to do, except for what he wanted to do.

Erick smiled to himself, saying, “I want to have more days like this.”

- - - -

“So it’s time to learn some Time Magic,” Erick said, sitting alone in the middle of his Gate warehouse.

He had temporarily banished Poi and Teressa off to the house to do something else, and though Kiri desperately wanted to be let in on this lesson, she, too, was banished. Well... ‘Banished’ was a harsh word. Erick had asked them to stay away, and so they did.

But it was definitely a command, no matter the wording.

And now it was time to meet a god.

Erick sat back in a chair, relaxing his mind wide, his mana sense flowing outward—

And suddenly the world was a fractal stained glass window, and nothing moved anywhere, except for everything still moving all at once. Erick knew, somehow, that he was outside time, and yet... He wasn’t outside of time at all.

Another Erick stepped out of that fractal mess, though he was clearly the God of The End and Time.

“Hello, Phagar,” Erick said. “It took me a while to get around to this. I hope the offer still stands.”

With an easy voice that was exactly Erick’s, but different since it came from someone else, Phagar said, “Of course the offer still stands.” Phagar sat down in a chair that mirrored Erick’s, saying, “It’s better to approach this after settling many of your mortal worries, anyway. Any idea where you would like to start?”

For all his godly nature, Phagar was quite pleasant and calm to be around; an easy talker and listener.

But Erick wasn’t sure where to begin, so he offered, “At the beginning?”

Phagar gave a small smile, saying, “The Beginning and the End are often connected in Time Magic, so that’s the first thing to learn. But as for something useful? There are a large handful of concepts you should try to understand before you start putting those concepts together, so I’ll go through the whole thing once.

“There are easy Time Magics. There are difficult Time Magics.

“Then, there are Wizard-level Time Magics, which fall outside of the realm of simple categorization, because for some people they are easy, and for some they are hard.

“But before all that, there is Elemental Time, upon which all Time Magic is based. Yes, there is an Elemental Time. That is the first secret. Perhaps the largest.

“Easy magics are relegated to moderately speeding up or slowing down your own passage of time, or the passage of time for another. [Haste], for oneself. [Slow], as you have experienced with your own Ice Magic experiments. [Stop], as with your Ice Magic again.

“[Haste] requires clearance from me to learn, but since you have that, you could try and likely achieve that spellwork as soon as I explain how it works.

“[Haste] is achieved through the realization that Time is a parameter like gravity. It is not achieved through Elemental Fire, or anything like that. Instead, if you look at Elemental Ice, and you see how Slow and Stop work, then you should be able to understand Elemental Time, and through the grasping of that idea, you can achieve [Haste].

“Coincidentally, if you happen to speed up yourself, you will find that everything feels lighter. If you start moving really fast, then you could break other things just by touching them, but you will likely have broken yourself, if you go too fast. Making another version of [Haste] with some stabilization magics to remove that foible and allow yourself to properly move once again. Or, you could just use an Elemental Body while [Haste]d, and avoid that trouble altogether.

“Conversely, if you [Slow] someone, they will experience a heaviness.

“And while Slowing your enemies is always useful, [Haste] is not nearly as useful as a normal mage would think, for the Script Second still applies even in faster time, so unless one has a fair bit of experience with manual casting, or if they’re good with a sword and that sword can withstand accelerated time, then [Haste] is somewhat useless for most mages.

“This caveat doesn’t apply to you, but it must still be said.

“As a note: All Time Magic is magic cast upon a contained area. Never try to cast Time Magic upon ‘the area outside of myself’, or something equally nonsensical. It would be like trying to cast a magic without having enough mana to cast that magic; it would fail.

“Or, you could die. Either or, really.

“Moving on.

“Difficult Time Magics are applications of Elemental Time upon oneself in such a way as to travel one’s soul and mind through one’s own world line into the past. This application of Time Magic is completely removed from the physical world of Particle Magic, so slowness and gravity and speed don’t matter.

“An example of this magic is known as [Return].

“This is what I did for you at Last Shadow’s Feast, returning you to your subjective world of 5 minutes ago. I say ‘subjective world’, because you were already under heavy time dilation while inside the Shadow’s Feast barrier, so those ‘five minutes’ of time I gave you were in fact only 15 real seconds.

“15 real seconds costs a lot. The reasons are manifold, from the cost of paradoxes to the stress on the soul that needs to be compensated for, to many other smaller factors. The cost of [Return] increases rapidly for anything over 10 seconds.

“[Return] is just as much Soul Magic as it is Time Magic, and since this level of self-magic is so dangerous, most people never achieve this. It is along the same difficulty as learning [Teleport].

“You managed to brute force Remaking [Teleport] because you have Ophiel, and he could cast that magic for you, but using [Return] requires a soul and a world line attached to that soul. Ophiel has no soul of his own right now; all he has is yours. You could always try some Wizardry there, but I would caution against that. Ophiel would likely gain a soul if you tried that with him, and thus you would lose him as a summon.

“If you tried this with Yggdrasil, you would run into that Divine Seal on your soul, and likely just hurt yourself.

“Skipping forward in time is similarly difficult, if you want to actually skip forward in time. For example: if you don’t want to physically sleep, but you know you need to, you could [Onward] and find yourself waking up from a good night’s sleep.

“If you, however, just want to go forward in time, you can [Slow] yourself and watch the world go by.

“As a side effect, for those who are not immortal, [Slow]ing oneself is a great way to extend one’s lifespan, though you do miss out on life; it’s a tradeoff. As another note, using [Haste] too much could add virtual years to every decade of regular use, and for non-immortals, this is a problem.

“It shouldn’t be a problem for you, as you are immortal now.

“And then we have the Wizard-level Time Magics. There are a few well-known examples of this, and we can focus on those for now.

“The first is moving around through time, outside of your worldline guide. [Return]ing to an event a thousand years ago, or [Onward]ing to a thousand years in the future, without actually experiencing that intervening time.

“The second is moving around through time, cheaply. I list cheaper costs and outside-one’s-worldline separately, because they are, though there is a lot of overlap.

“The third is ignoring paradoxes. The classic example of a paradox is that, if you move through time and kill your mother before you are born, then this will unmake you. A proper Paradox Wizard will be able to make themselves exist outside of time, and thus they are immune to this effect. Normal mages can be made paradox proof but it is not an easy process, though it does get easier with more time and more paradox proofing. This type of Time Wizardry is why the ‘Paradox-Creation-Destruction’ split has ‘Paradox’ as part of that trio of Wizard types. Paradoxing is a major part of Wizardry.

Back and forth.

Here and there.

Hot and cold, but only because both ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ were variations of the singular phenomenon of temperature, and one’s place already on the scale.

Elemental Time was in the manasphere, everywhere Erick looked. It was what allowed people to look backward in time, and also forward. Elemental Time had always been here. Erick just didn’t have the Sight to know the river for what it truly was, until now.

Instinctively, Erick knew he could fall into that river and swim with or against the current, but now that he saw the water, he knew he could also pluck some of that out and drink deep. Falling in would be terrifying, and so Erick left that task for another day. For now, he grabbed some Time, and had a sip—

Everything slowed.

Ophiel’s wings moved slowly, taking multiple seconds for a single flap. Beyond the windows, the leaves of Yggdrasil waved in a molasses wind. Erick moved a little, and instantly noticed he was as light as a feather. Breathing was hard. Air moved through his lungs like a cold fog that only warmed when it was inside of him. He exhaled that fog, forming minuscule swirls in the stillness of the warehouse air.

Erick took a step forward and watched as Ophiels’ eyes lagged behind him by less than half a second. But there had been a lag. Noticeable, too.

Some familiar blue boxes appeared.

Special Quest Complete!

You have remade a Basic Spell.

Since you do not already have Haste, here you go:

Haste 1, instant, self, 50 mana

Double your subjective time. Lasts 1 minute.

Erick smiled.

And then he started playing around with moving in this new, odd sort of way. Jumping up and down, and moving left to right, Erick held out his hands as though he was riding in a car, feeling the wind on his palm. He knifed the air apart as he moved quicker than he ever had before; even when using [Hunter’s Instincts].

It was kinda fun to play around with new magic!

A lot of fun, actually. Erick laughed, and he heard himself laugh through Ophiel’s senses, like he was a hyperactive chipmunk chortling to a staccato beat. It was so freaky, he laughed more.

Magic was wonderful!

Eventually, Erick decided he had had enough fun playing around, and he needed the tenth level of this spell, so he power leveled it. Strangely enough, casting [Haste] upon himself multiple times did not multiply the effect.

Haste X, instant, self, 50 mana

Double your subjective time. Lasts 10 minutes.

He could make that into a [10 hours in 10 minutes] spell, for sure. Might take multiple attempts, though. But first, Erick returned to the sound of Elemental Time, and went in the other direction.

Erick sipped the river of time in a different sort of way.

Everything turned heavy as a weight descended upon him and all of his movements seemed sluggish, while the entire rest of the world seemed fast. Ophiels twittered in super high notes as they danced around, playing with Erick like hyperactive birds, and he laughed like a rumbling mountain; ponderous and slow—

Special Quest Complete!

You have remade a Basic Spell.

Since you do not already have Slow, here you go:

Slow 1, instant, self, 50 mana

Halve your subjective time. Lasts 1 minute.

Erick did not like this spell at all, though it would be useful to have in order to use against others. He power leveled [Slow], and then he canceled it.

Slow X, instant, self, 50 mana

Halve your subjective time. Lasts 10 minutes.

He had only just started with Time Magic, but Erick felt he had a good beginner’s grasp of the subject. It seemed easy enough to turn either of these spells into magic that would affect others, though Erick suspected that such a spell would be subject to the normal Health-based denials, since this sort of magic was status effect magic. Erick tested out [Haste] and [Force Bolt] to see if he was correct.

Erick conjured a [Fairy Item] dummy made with a thin cover of ice and warm water insides. His theory was that it should melt and break apart rather fast when Hasted, though he had never done this before; He could only guess. Today was full of fun little magics!

Anyway.

Erick pointed at the dummy and joined [Haste] with [Force Bolt].

A dot of flowing white magic struck the dummy—

Like a video sped up to double speed, a crack formed on the bottom of the dummy and rapidly spread up and out, but the water inside was already rapidly flowing out of the hole in the bottom—

The whole conjuring vanished into so much scattered white glows as a blue box appeared.

Haste Other, instant, close range, 55 mana

Attempt to double the subjective time of a target for 10 minutes.

Erick hummed. ‘Attempt to double’ was rather appropriate for a ‘Health negates this’ sort of spell. It certainly didn’t read as well as [Slowing Bolt] read, though; ‘inflicting Slow for a Variable length of time’ seemed like a higher application of this working, for sure.

His [Haste Other] was probably a rather shitty version.

Erick moved on.

Now if he was correct, the combination of [Ward] and [Haste] would create a fast space inside where time flowed twice as fast. Such a simple working would likely not be good enough for a sleeping spell, but Erick had to start somewhere, and to make sure the magic actually worked like he thought it would.

Would there be a problem at the edge, and an insurmountable barrier to cross? Or would there just be some gentle shearing upon trying to cross from normal time to fast time? Erick guessed the latter.

Tomorrow, he could try for a Variable Cost Variable Effect working.

But for now, Erick linked [Haste] to [Ward], and cast the spell.

For five meters in every direction, the air shifted. A faint white wind formed a translucent barrier all around. Inside, the world seemed fine. Outside, though, Erick watched the molasses wind play in Yggdrasil’s canopy, gently moving the green sea above like so many slow waves.

An expected blue box appeared.

Hasted Area, instant, close range, 100 mana

Double the subjective time in a large area for 10 minutes. Crossing the barrier might break the spell.

Erick didn’t even get to test out the second part of that blue box, for while Yggdrasil was here and experiencing a bit of dissonance, Ophiel was having an experience. The little guy was both inside and outside of the area of effect. The Ophiel on Erick’s shoulder yelped while the little guys outside of the barrier crowed, their voices seeming unnaturally low and weird. The Ophiel outside instantly moved inward, crossing the barrier, breaking the spell with all the ease of popping a soap bubble.

Time resumed as normal, and Ophiel began chirping about how everything had been really weird for a moment! Why had everything been weird!

Erick smiled and patted the little guy, telling him, “It was just some Time Magic. No need to worry.”

Yggdrasil spoke, “It was weird, father.”

Erick looked at the big guy’s [Scry] eye, asking, “Did I catch you in the effect?”

“No. But I felt you move weird. Time Magic is weird.”

“Weird bad? Or weird weird?”

“Weird weird.”

Erick smiled a little, saying, “Weird weird is fine. If it turns into weird bad, let me know, okay?”

“I will!”

Ophiel chirped.

Erick told Ophiel, “You’re probably going to have to get used to that, but I can pull all of you inside while I sleep if it’s too much trouble.”

Ophiel chirped again, accepting that safety came before comfort.

Erick smiled, and then he broke the [Hasted Area] spell the Script had created in his soul, for this wasn’t exactly what he wanted out of that magic.

He also watched his core while he broke the spell. A familiar sensation of crumbling took hold inside of him and his core gained a minuscule crack that was barely more than mar of shadow inside the perfect, Benevolent sphere beside his heart. To be sure he was seeing it correctly, Erick broke apart [Haste Other], too—

And up, there was another small mar, on the other side of his core.

Well then! He could probably fix that damage with a bit of accreting, and maybe he could even try making [Haste Other] again.

Erick began accreting like he usually did; holding his aura open, sealing out all other mana as he flooded his aura with his own mana, and then cycling that mana back inside. Sparks of lightning gathered on his aura’s exterior surface and flowed inward, into his body and into his core. Gradually, slowly, white lightning filled in the mar inside his core—

The second his core was repaired, Erick knew he could try to combine his magic again, and that the Script would help him make that spell a permanent part of his soul. Only people with cores got to benefit from this method; if Erick had broken this spell while in his Normal Form, he couldn’t repair the damage, nor could he reduce the cooldown on Script assistance. There were just so many small nuances to how the Script helped people, and how one could actually ‘game the system’, as Jane had once put it, but only when one knew how the system worked and what normal magic looked like in the first place.

Erick smiled wide, thinking about how far he had come since he and Jane had fallen to Veird.

He tried making [Haste Other] again—

Nothing happened.

No blue boxes?

Erick tried again, striking the ice-water dummy with another combo of [Haste] and [Force Bolt]...

Nothing.

Ah...

“Maybe the Script sees that it tried to help me once already.” Erick frowned a little. “So that means I have to go outside the Script when I break the spell? So it’s not tracked? That’s probably it.”

Eh!

Whatever.

There were a lot of different ways to go with this spell and all of Erick’s current ideas could stand to percolate for a while.

- - - -

Dipping his toes into Time Magic didn’t take much time at all, and so, Erick still had almost all the rest of the day free. First he went back home to gather Teressa and Kiri. After explaining what he wanted to do next, they were both interested.

A lightning portal led the way to their next destination.

The Benevolence research tower.