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Erick hated the smell of uncleaned battlefields. Of blood and mud and piss and shit. Of death. All of those smells now assaulted him, as he walked across the bloodied grasslands of floor 2, of the Glittering Depths. The scent brought to mind all the death Erick had seen in the wake of the Wizard of Anarchy, raising a mountain all the way to the Edge of the Script in the center of Quintlan, in the Fractured Citadels, where undead were as numerous as trees in an endless forest. Memories of eliminating Terror Peaks came to mind next, and of the millions dead in the Chelation War, where bodies weren’t able to be cleaned for days…

When had this ‘battle’ of the second floor even taken place? It smelled a lot worse than it should smell. Or had Erick ‘arrived’ at this battlefield on day 2 or 3 of the slaughter? Maybe even day 4.

Erick held his head high, and walked on. The bodies were getting less and less numerous as Erick and his band of rescued people got further away from the front lines. Erick had encountered several patrols of the red tabarded in the two hours they had walked away from the front lines, each one rather more deadly than the last, but he had rescued more than a few soldiers, including Kinder. Those rescues even helped rescue even more people, but mostly in a distracting sense; Erick did most of the damage. His rescues now numbered 47 semi-healthy people, and another 13 people on makeshift stretchers.

He was up to number 6 in the Rescue and Revenge questline. Every completion netted him another 500 mana regen, along with a small collections of metamonds and metirons. He had a very small hoard of loot at the moment, but all of it was useless without being transformed into proper, working tools.

Erick looked to the air, and said, “Status.”

- -

Ashes Woodfield (9 saves remaining)

MP per day: 8500

Meta-Irons: 1850, 0 in storage

Meta-Diamonds: 5/10, 0 in storage

Bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation], 97/100

Rod of the Lightning Guardian, 872/1000

Necklace of [Meditation], 47/50

Wand of [Drinking Food], 200/200

Belt of Many Functions, (depleted), (depleted), [Unsensible], 247/250

Shield (depleted), 211/250

Unused Meta-Irons: Staff of the Anti-Magus (BROKEN) 50/50, Wand (Empty) 5/5, Wand (Empty) 5/5, Bracelet (depleted) 5/5, Bracelet (depleted) 5/5, Breastplate (depleted) 250/250,

Unused Meta-Diamonds: [Murky], [Benediction], [Flaming Ooze], [Shadow Bolt], [Paper Control], [Memorize], [Minor Treat Wounds], [Force Shield], [Force Spike], [Health] x 7, [Basic Light] x5, [Basic Shadow], [Basic Stone] x2, [Basic Air] x2, [Basic Fire] x3, [Basic Water] x4, [Unknown] x18

- -

Erick didn’t actually carry all that. Kinder wore the breastplate and another of the soldiers carried almost all of the extra metamonds and metairons. Apparently that was ‘close enough’ to Erick carrying it that it still counted under his status.

A few of the people Erick had rescued even had meta-items of their own, and some of them had proven very useful in certain situations. There was one woman who called herself ‘Scout’, who had magic in that same vein as her namesake. A group of over 60 soldiers was not a quiet thing, even though most of them were trying to be quiet, so Erick had sent Scout ahead every so often to check the way forward, to ensure that they weren’t ambushed.

Scout once again appeared in the air ahead of Erick, about forty meters away, already walking Erick’s way. Air and Light and Shadow peeling away as she came closer. She bowed, unhurried, and then rose when Erick got close. She spoke in a monotone voice, “I detect no enemies ahead of us, sir.”

Erick was pretty sure that she was an NPC, because what he had asked her to do was look for enemies, people who needed help, and Marii’s hidden base. Several times now, Scout’s only response when returning had been that she had seen no enemies ahead of them. Erick asked, “Did you see Marii’s base?”

“I detect no enemies ahead of us, sir.”

Kinder spoke up, his voice rather like a normal person’s, “We might be close to Marii’s.”

Erick told Scout, “Go out and check for more enemies, then report back. Make sure we’re not ambushed. If you see Marii’s then report back and bring us there.”

The woman backed away and half-vanished, the world seeming to curl around her body, leaving her mostly invisible. Her supple shoes and lower legs were still visible when she moved too fast, which is what she did, her feet lifting off the ground as she almost floated away, hopping through the air. She took ten steps for every one anyone else would take.

Erick nodded to himself as he saw Scout vanish up the low hills. “That’s a good movement skill; trustworthy, even if it’s not foolproof. I prefer an entire Elemental Body, though.” He asked Kinder, “Are there Shaping spells here? I haven’t seen any yet.”

Kinder, who was probably from Greensoil and not an NPC at all, said, “Might have some Shaping magic inside those unknown gems you picked up, sir, but maybe not. Those are rare.”

“Do you know why some of those looted gems are unknown?”

“I’m surprised you can tell what any of them are at all, without [Identify].” Kinder plucked out a gem from his pocket, to hold it aloft. It shimmered blue and white and gold. “I have no idea what this one is. Gold is divine magic, right?”

“Usually.” Erick shrugged. “White and blue means Light and Water, so maybe Healing Magic is my guess.”

Kinder put it back in his pocket, where he was keeping all other truly special-seeming ones that Erick had given him to hold. “Marii should have [Identify]. She’ll be able to tell us more.”

“So where is she?”

Kinder looked around, then directed his gaze up a distant, yet nearby hill, just to the right of their current direction. There was a rock at the top of that hill. “Architect Marii put stones like that around her location, so we’re close. Want to walk up to the top of that hill there and see if we can see?”

“Yes.”

Erick began walking that direction, and the caravan followed. When they got closer, Erick directed the caravan to stay in the lowlands, as he and Kinder ascended the hillside. Two minutes later, Erick stood at the top of a hill with a stone half buried near the top.

He saw their destination. Or at least he saw where their destination probably was. He also saw the entire plains spread out before him.

This was a vast, vast land of undulating hills and trees here and there. To the area that Kinder had called ‘fallward’, which was where the sunstar fell every evening, which was what Erick termed ‘west’ in his mind, lay the majority of the battlefield, and the resistance headquarters known as the Plains. Smoke rose from there, like someone had started prairie fires across half the horizon. To the north, or ‘moonwards’, where the actual moon of Insten sat in the sky, like an unmoving silver dot, lay the mountains. To the south, or ‘Riamways’, where Riam hung in the sky, lay the depleted lands of Insten and the actual frontlines of Insten’s war for independence.

Erick, Kinder, and the caravan had been headed ‘risewards’, or east, to get here, wherever ‘here’ was.

“There,” Kinder said, as he pointed. “Those hills. Marii’s base is hidden under Illusion Magic or whatever she does with the place. There are probably traps from Marii scattered all over there. Maybe Riam ambushes too; trying to stop people like us from reconnecting with known forces.”

Erick nodded. “Yeah. Probably.”

Kinder smiled, even though there was danger. “But the place doesn’t look on fire. Looks like it survived.”

Five hills over from their current location, a collection of six hills sat in a hexagon pattern. Each one of those hills had one very bent tree growing just off the side of the hilltop, which was odd, but not too odd. But each of the six hills were exactly the same, and every hill’s tree was turned a sixth of the way around on the hilltop, as though the hill had been copied, rotated a little, and set in a 6-hill grouping.

“Which hill is the correct one, Kinder?”

“All of them.” Kinder said, “And none of them. Whichever one the enemy is not at.”

A slow smile crept upon Erick’s face. “Oh? That’s interesting. Can you take down that defense with a simple numbers attack?”

Kinder frowned a little. “Not sure what that is, sir.”

“Putting a person on each possible hill, or attacking all hills at the same time.”

“Oh! … I don’t know. Architect Marii has pretty good defenses, and I’ve heard stories of people sneaking up on all sides and one of them getting in to see Marii. But that’s okay, right? Means she’s split the enemy into six parts, and she can pick whichever one she wants to kill first.” Kinder said, “She’ll see us coming, sir. We can probably go up all at once and she’ll just let us in.”

“We’ll find out.”

Scout appeared out of the air nearby, before stepping closer enough to report, which she did. “I detect no enemies ahead of us, sir.”

Erick pointed toward the six hills that made up Marii’s defenses. “Go alert Marii. Tell her we’re coming in with refugees.”

Scout dashed off.

Ten minutes later, Erick stood at the base of the nearest illusionary hill, with his caravan of people behind him.

The air shimmered ahead, and light parted, revealing a collection of towers and walls with glittering metal roofs and floating gems above those roofs. The ground outside of Marii’s base was empty, save for Scout, who stood in the middle of the shimmering portal to safety.

Scout said, “Architect Marii is waiting.”

Find Architect Marii’s hidden location. 1/1

Erick told his caravan of people, “Inside. Double-time.”

For another five minutes, Erick stood outside of the protected space, making sure the others got into the protected area first. And then Erick went inside, and the shimmer of Illusion magics closed behind him. They hadn’t been assaulted at the last moment. Which was pretty good! Erick had expected an ambush.

Perhaps Marii and her people had actually already killed all ambush-capable forces? That’d be nice. Erick hadn’t seen much of Architect Marii’s place, but already he was interested in what he saw. The idea of scattering the position of a house over several locations was novel to him. Maybe he could even replicate the effect back on Veird, with his cloud castle. You could never have too many defenses, after all.

As Erick followed the caravan into Marii’s hill-spanning castle, he imagined that he would be spending some time here making some new mana-crystal-based magic, for mana crystals were excellent tools for making further magic.

Mana crystals weren’t used on Veird itself, but they were used inside Ar’Cosmos, and other Script-distant lands, like here in the Dark. Maybe some of it could even translate to Veird, so that he could use it in case he ever needed to go past the Edge again.

… Hopefully that would never happen again, but there was a lot of good to be had in preparing for Edge cases.

Erick chuckled to himself at his own joke, as the shimmer separating Marii’s hill from the rest of the world closed behind him.

From this angle, inside the shimmer, Erick looked out across the land, inspecting what he was seeing. Each of the six hills were maybe half a kilometer across at the top, with another half kilometer between them. Marii’s hill had her castle, of course, but the other tops of the other five hills looked like they were green pies, with a large helping of foggy ‘meringue’ on top. That airy, watery, foggy area was probably a major component of the illusion magics that made this place appear on whatever hill Marii decided to appear on... Or something like that.

He’d find out about all that later.

A gate into Marii’s castle held open in front, where soldiers stationed at this base scanned Erick’s rescued people with various magics, and guided refugees to tents and cots and other resting stations inside the castle. Other people started healing the refugees, while the soldiers Erick had gathered began to seamlessly mix into Marii’s forces.

Good.

Erick wouldn’t have to deal with all that organization.

Kinder stood just ahead, having waited for Erick, to say, “Marii will see us, now.”

- - - -

Inside a side room, off the main castle courtyard, Erick met with the woman in charge of this castle.

Marii was a short woman with flaming red hair and bright green eyes, and a rapid, no-nonsense way of speaking, “You’re the rescuer, then? Good. What do you need to kill all the Reds attacking us? Or are you going to coward out and go to the mountains like the rest of the bastards that came this way?”

Her words were spoken with half-inflections, as though she were stating words off of a script that she had never practiced for. She was clearly an NPC, and not really ‘there’, but Erick treated her as he would any person; with as much truth as he could.

“Gonna kill the reds here, so I need access to your mana chambers and I need help identifying the stuff I managed to take back and scavenge from the patrols.”

Marii breathed out a little, and her tone turned easier. “Good answer.” She retrieved a ring from her pocket, and held it out to Erick. The ring had a dull white gem. “Ring of [Identify].”

Erick took the ring—

Marii pointed with her now-free hand. “Mana chambers that way. Don’t break them. They’re all we have left from this location.”

“Meta-iron forging facilities?”

“Through the door next to the mana chambers. Those are hard to replace, too.”

“Do you know how to shape a new meta-iron from old meta-irons?”

“Yes. Melt down the scrap, pour it into a prepared mold. Take the iron out of the mold and clean it up. Runes and words if you want. Prime the iron with several meta-diamonds that you don’t give a shit about, but which are similar to the meta-iron that you want to eventually use, then you break that meta-diamond and start inserting the ones you care about. Test with [Identify] each time you add a new gem to make sure you’re doing it right. Wham bam, there’s your completed item. We done here?”

“… Sure. We’re done.”

Architect Marii walked away. She was busy, apparently.

Erick watched her go for a moment, then he went off to the mana chamber room.

- - - -

The mana chamber room held three different cubes like the ones Erick saw back at the arcanaeum, on floor 1, each of them three meters wide on all sides. A few tables sat opposite the mana chambers, ready with tools of all sorts and to hold whatever projects anyone might be working on. This was clearly a space where many different people could all work on their own projects at the same time.

Erick took up the entire space himself. After having the people he rescued, who held his loot, set out that loot from the R&R missions on the left-most table, Erick began sorting it as he desired, tapping his new Ring of [Identify] on everything, one by one.

Most of the metamonds were attack magics, like [Wind Cutter] and [Fireball]. Most of them, and especially [Fireball], had similar displays to what Erick would expect to find in a blue box from the Script, but different. Erick recalled the standard blue box for [Fireball].

- -

Fireball, instant, long range, 75 mana

Launch a quick ball of fire that explodes on contact, damaging a medium area for 50 + 2x WIL and igniting everything touched, dealing WIL damage per second for 10 seconds.

- -

But the floating text for the [Fireball] of the Glittering Depths read:

Fireball, instant, long range, 75 mana

Launch a quick ball of fire that explodes on contact, damaging a medium area for 100 damage and igniting everything touched, dealing 25 damage per second for 10 seconds.

Mana Density Multiplier: 50%

The damage of the [Fireball] of the Glittering Depths was flat, without any modifiers. Erick suspected it was based on a person with 25 Willpower. This told Erick a lot about a lot, but he’d organize those thoughts later.

That MDM number was concerning. A bunch of the stuff Erick used [Identify] on came back with that ‘Mana Density Multiplier’, but certainly not all. [Wind Cutter] was at 50%, just like [Fireball]. But [Water Bolt] was at 95%. [Stone Shot] didn’t have an MDM.

Didn’t take a genius to understand that every single spell that had a large area of effect component was hit hard by the Mana Density Multiplier. Spells that conjured some solid thing and then threw it, like [Stone Shot], weren’t affected at all.

All the spells inside Erick’s gear, surprisingly, didn’t have an MDM at all. He would have expected a few things, like [Self Rejuvenation] and his Lightning Rod to have that mana density drawback, since they were both buff or debuff spells and those things seemed like they would dissipate in the mana density disparity between his body and the dungeon (or an enemy’s body and the dungeon).

Erick had a quick think.

Spells were like balloons filled with just enough air to fill them out, and not to actually expand them at all. Depending on the environment a spell was cast into, that spell would act based on its environment. Perhaps the best notion of what was happening here, with this MDM entry, was what happened when you cast an air spell underwater, or when you cast a water spell (meant for underwater combat) above water. Or an air spell inside stone (but not really the other way around, since stone was rather non-compressible, in most scenarios.)

At high interior mana pressure as compared to outside space, a spell would either grow physically larger than expected and thus weaker, or fail altogether. At equalized mana pressure, a spell would act as expected, doing what you made it to do. At a high exterior mana pressure, a spell, once cast, would collapse inward, with a smaller area of effect, or fail, as the flows of intent and magic inside the spell could not move as they were made to move.

High exterior mana pressure existed in places like the tunnels near the Core of Veird, where mana flowed through the planet in flying rivers thick enough to see with the naked eye, where monsters roamed in order to naturally draw all that thick mana into their own grand rads. In there, spells didn’t so much fail due to mana pressure… So maybe not like there at all.

That was probably due to the Script, though.

Moving on.

Equalized mana pressure happened almost everywhere else on Veird.

Past the Edge of Veird, and also here, in the Glittering Depths, almost all spells had a higher interior mana pressure than the emptiness everywhere else. So spells like this [Fireball] metamond, which created an effect outside of a body… Had some sort of low multiplier?

Erick wasn’t sure exactly what this ‘multiplier’ meant. Was it a thing that area of effect spells had, to explain how they would act in this environment down here? Or was it a purposeful effect, imposed upon area spells by the dungeon?

… Erick was leaning on the idea that it was some sort of estimated behavior, a way to tell the user that it would have a ‘50% effect’ (whatever that meant) because dungeons were meant to be places of learning. If the dungeon was doing weird shit to your magic, making your magic act in strange ways that it would never act like anywhere else, then those dungeons were generally shit. Grand Dungeons, like these Glittering Depths… Sure, it had a Second Script, but it was meant to be a learning place, and it was a learning place, with lessons that could be learned and then taken outside the dungeon.

… And with that in mind, Erick suspected spells with a low MDM were highly affected by mana density, and spells with a high MDM were not affected at all; spells like [Stone Shot].

Stone Shot, instant, long range, 5 mana

A bolt of stone strikes where you aim.

But [Water Bolt] had a bit of MDM, because it was a ‘splash’.

Water Bolt, instant, long range, 5 mana

A highly distracting bolt of water unerringly splashes a target.

Mana Density Multiplier: 95%

Water was prone to shifts in density a little, so that 95% was understandable, but Water’s malleability was nothing like Fire and Air, while Stone was rock solid through most conjuring, simply because Stone was… Well. Stone.

Erick might put [Fireball] inside one of his extra wands and see what happened; to actually test his theories. He expected to make a [Fireball] that was… Larger and weaker, probably.

Anyway. Moving on to other theories and crafting...

Why did his Rod of the Lightning Guardian not have any MDM at all? Why did [Self Rejuvenation] not have an MDM?

Rod of the Lightning Guardian, attuned artifact, 1000/1000

Spend a variable amount of mana to empower the rod with Benevolent Lightning. Touching any living thing with this empowerment will inflict a lingering destruction unto the touched target, disrupting auras, exterior magic, and steadily causing physical damage.

Bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation], attuned artifact, 99/100

Continually heal at ten times normal rate.

Overcharge healing for 25 mana, condensing a week of healing into 10 minutes.

So things got complicated here.

Erick started at the beginning.

A body, which was currently under the control of a soul, had a sort of ‘stickiness’ or ‘merge-ability’ to it, when it came to certain magics. Healing magics, primarily. Both normal-living-things, and monsters with a core had souls that controlled their bodies. Normal people had souls all throughout their bodies. Monsters (and people like Erick) had souls inside their cores, which exuded control over the body through a natural ‘aura like’ effect; but it wasn’t the soul, exactly.

Health, as that which existed on Veird, was an example of this sort of soul-control a living soul had over the body it inhabited.

But there was no Health in this dungeon, without actually using a metamond for Health.

And here’s the big thing: without Health, the body was completely vulnerable to interior spellwork. Erick could have taken his rod and stabbed it into one of Fyuri’s wounds, or whatever, and fried her from the inside. Even touching her body at all had fried her much, much more deeply than was possible on Veird, where Health would have stopped that from happening.

And so, without Health… Shouldn’t these spells that affected living things be stripped away, as mana was stripped away from people, here in the dungeon?

Well.

Obviously not.

Erick’s rod’s lightning and the [Self Rejuvenation] were obviously working their power on the soul-animated body, and not being pulled away or negated by the dungeon’s mana vacuum.

So that was half of the answer as to why his bracelet and the rod both did not have a multiplier; they both functioned to affect a body.

… But Healing Magic outside of the Script went off of the blueprint of the soul… And Erick’s soul was fully contained into his core, as was the case with most people who had cores. So there were some interesting interactions happening there.

For Erick’s purposes, the Healing found in the Glittering Depths had to be tied to the physical body more than it was tied to the soul, because if it was tied to the soul, then Erick wouldn’t have had any physical changes at all when he came into the dungeon. Or maybe he had that backwards?

Erick had adjusted his body through [Perfected Polymorph] and gained a temporary Familiar Form called ‘Ashes Woodfield’.

But this Form is not the one he had made earlier.

Erick looked down at himself.

His hair was a bit longer, and he was a bit more muscular than he had made himself, before he stepped into the dungeon today. A little younger, too. Erick had initially thought all of that was due to some sort of resonance with the memory of the dungeon and the Dark and Ashes-of-the-Old-Cosmology, but perhaps this change was a conflict of soul versus body, and brought to a conclusion outside of Erick’s expertise because of the generalized Healing Magic of his [Self Rejuvenation] bracelet.

Was this Wizardry? Making him look more like how Ashes should have looked?

… No way to really know, though, without extensive magical testing, and another talk with Atunir.

Could also have something to do with his draconic soul, and Erick, in his heart of hearts, wanting to be more handsome than he had originally made Ashes… Because yes, he was a bit vain sometimes. Who didn’t want to look pretty!

So maybe this different form was from the disconnect between his body, his soul, and what he wanted, and what he made, and how Elemental Healing was working here in the dungeon…

Erick almost chuckled.

He was quite far out of his depth right now! All of these tiny things coming together in odd ways!

Erick was rather sure that if some academically inclined person desired to make a name for themselves in the Healing arts, then they might want to come to the Glittering Depths to do safe Healing Magic experiments in a low-mana environment. Dragons and normal people; both would be good to have down here, doing experiments. Sure, it was a dungeon with different rules of magic, but the Glittering Depths was specifically made to help people understand magic in a low mana environment; not to fuck up peoples’ basic understanding of how magic worked.

So, perhaps, the Glittering Depths, free of all Script interference, might actually be the purest expression of magery anywhere on this planet… Except for maybe Melemizargo’s own, personal dungeons.

Even Ar’Cosmos, with its anti-Script nature, couldn’t boast this level of pure magic, basic and unmangled.

… Was someone already doing this, though? Seems like someone might. But Erick couldn’t recall if he knew of anyone trying to figure out Healing Magic in low mana, non-Script environments. Such research would be good for civilization, for once they got past Veird and into outer space, mana would behave like itself, instead of like how the Relevant Entities decided it should behave.

… Did Erick want to do that research himself?

No. Not really. He did not have enough time for such a distraction, and he did not want to become a hermit, living inside a dungeon, separate from Veird and the people he cared about.

… Maybe he could set up a lab at the Edge of the Script? That might be nice. Safer than being inside a dungeon, but not by much at all…

Maybe.

Anyway!

Healing Magic and various bodily-affecting magic probably worked (arguably) reasonably normal in a low mana environment, because the body was a natural ‘conductor’ for mana-based effects (with that whole ‘it’s the aura, but not really the aura’ thing happening here).

And that wasn’t even bringing up the complications of monsters and healing! Monsters had bodies separate from their souls, which made their bodies easier to repair because an attack on the body did not attack the soul, as was the case with what happened to most other people when you cut off their arms, or what-have-you. If a person got their arm cut off, and they were not healed for a long time, then the soul that existed in that arm would gradually fade away and/or retract, and that unfortunate person would need to get a [Reincarnation] from Erick in order to regain their arm, because the arm would be gone.

And that whole thing was complicated, too.

On Veird, Healing Magic worked perfectly fine to heal people with degrading soul conditions, because the Script heavily supported that action. But gradually, if the underlying soul damage wasn’t healed, either through powerful magic (for large, dangerous injuries) or time and careful healing (for smaller injuries, since souls did heal over time), then the person’s ‘healed’ body would gradually fail in those areas where their soul didn’t reach anymore.

Healing Magic was incredibly complicated, but here in the Glittering Depths, Erick felt he was seeing Healing Magic unaffected by the Script for the first time.

He was also seeing how magic worked in vacuums.

Erick used his [Identify] ring on his belt, to check out [Unsensible].

He got another surprise.

Belt of Many Functions, attuned artifact, 0, 0, 247/250

(Empty)

(Empty)

Unsensible, self, low grade buff, 25 mana

Let no one else mana sense your self. Lasts 10 minutes.

Automatically recast when spell fades.

Mana Density Multiplier: 75%

That ‘Automatic’ clause was something Erick had never found on a Script-based spell, and that it labeled itself as a ‘buff’ was different too. Buffs were usually harmful to people, because they messed with the nature of one’s soul. But [Unsensible] had not harmed Erick at all, as far as he could tell…

Maybe it was harming him? He couldn’t tell, though? He had only been using it for a few hours?

… It probably was harming him.

Erick flicked his aura through the belt, and turned off the [Unsensible].

… And he waited.

He waited for the crash of a stressed soul, and for the weakness of a buff —any buff at all— leaving the body…

And he felt… Just fine? Weird.

Okay. [Unsensible] was doing something that was not normally possible under the Script; reactivations aside, buffing magic should stress the soul. Erick reactivated the [Unsensible], and considered what might be happening.

… And he looked fine. His soul, inside his core, was fine?

… So the Script was either purposefully disincentivizing buff spells, or this Second Script inside the Glittering Depths was enabling buff spells in some odd sort of way…

Perhaps…

Maybe since the Glittering Depths didn’t actually interact with a delver’s soul until much later in the dungeon (when it actually started giving out base increased mana production that worked everywhere) and instead had a delver use dungeon mana to do everything, this allowed buff spells to work well, here?

Erick hadn’t done much with buffing or debuffing magic, except in a general sense to understand them, in a long while. Perhaps he should talk to Syllea Wyrmrest at Treehome and see if she had any more insights into buffing and debuffing magic; she had helped Erick a long time ago with that sort of stuff, and all that magic was her favorite type.

Anyway.

[Unsensible] had an MDM. This was probably because it made an aura that existed outside of his body, and did not stop right at his skin. This was probably to include his clothes and weapons and stuff like that. This also meant that it drained his mana more than it normally would, in a full-mana environment.

Erick was rather sure that the Mana Density Multiplier of [Unsensible] was the reason that it wasn’t topped off on mana. Erick wasn’t running his [Meditation] amulet right now, so his regeneration was around 5.9 mana every minute, which was going into every single piece of gear on him. [Unsensible] and [Self Rejuvenation] were the only things active right now, so they were taking all of that mana.

But [Self Rejuvenation] was down 1 mana, sitting at 99/100. That was a constant drain, though. Whenever it reached 100, it flickered down to 99, constantly suffusing him with Healing, with the rate going up when necessary, like in the middle of a fight. That tiny trickle wasn’t enough to actually heal him from any of his wounds in a fight, but it was noticeable, and it was probably as much as that spell could do without causing him cancers.

[Unsensible] was down 3 mana, which meant that it was a different kind of spell; one that activated an effect, and then waited till that effect went away before activating again (which was new, and interesting, and you couldn’t do that under the Script!). It was also a spell that activated outside of his body, marking his space in reality as ‘unsensible’ to mana sense.

And it was activating more than every 10 minutes, for that exact reason. It was making magic, and the lack of mana density in the air all around sucked that spellwork away. Erick wasn’t wholly sure of the timing on that, but he would keep an eye on it, as he moved on to other parts of his loot, and other thoughts.

Erick used his new Ring of [Identify] on [Benediction].

Benediction, self, perfect buff, 10 mana

Empower the target in every physical way. Lasts 10 minutes.

Erick smiled as plans formed in his mind. “I’m gonna use that with… Maybe… Every self-empowering spell I have here.”

Yes.

That would do nicely.

Sure, making magic here in the Glittering Depths might not be like making spells on Veird, and he couldn’t take any of these spells with him out there, but this environment itself was the real prize of this whole dungeon experience. This was good practice for making a lab past the Edge of Veird, where he could work on mana crystals outside of the Script, and outside of the influence of the Dark.

Erick certainly wouldn’t be making a simple staircase to the Edge, like Holo had done. The gravity alone in that single, stable location, was crushing. No; Erick would have to make an orbital lab, so that gravity didn’t pancake him or other mages he invited out there to play with magics outside of the Script.

But for now, Erick decided to work on a generalized buffing spell for use here in the dungeon.

Erick had several plans for the Glittering Depths. Discovering Ashes’s storyline and why it called to him was but one of his goals. He had a few more. He wanted to use all this stuff he learned here to make a true orbital platform outside of the Script, in order to play around with real magic, out there in the void of space.

But before all that, Erick would need to clear away the dangers of floor 2.

So Erick grabbed [Memorize], which was a basic Elemental Book memory enhancement spell, and [Benediction], along with a bunch of other stuff, and went into a mana chamber. He closed the door behind him, flicked his aura through his Rod of the Lightning Guardian, causing mana to flood into the confined space like a thin fog.

As the air began to fill with white mana, Erick relaxed, ready for the relaxation that came last time when he—

And then he frowned, as a pressure built. A twitch of anger zapped across Erick’s mind. Fuck. His core was equalized with the manasphere of the second floor. But as the mana pressure increased in here…

With a sigh, Erick reinforced the barrier of his core against exterior mana, and ensured that the dungeon mana didn’t invade his own. Whelp! It was nice to not worry about a manasphere/core differential while it lasted, but now Erick was on the other end of the equation. Mana pressed in against Erick, and Erick knew that if he did not have a core, that he would have been fine. But he had a core, and he felt squished.

Better than monsterizing, though.

Experiments in mana crystals and on orbital platforms might have to wait until after Erick became a Full Wizard, and didn’t need to worry about core/soul/body discrepancies.

Eh.

Put it on the list of goals!

- - - -

Four hours later, Erick opened the chamber and white fog spilled out into the world where it rapidly vanished into the manasphere in every direction.

Making mana crystals was kinda fun!

Erick hadn’t managed anything too spectacular, for he had only really stretched what he knew mana crystals could do with the creation of the breastplate, so he was almost 100% sure that all of these spells he had made were repeatable on Veird, if he felt like making them.

And that, right there, was concerning.

As he began putting his new items out on the tables, Erick recalled the words that had splashed through the air when he exited the dungeon at the end of Floor 1: “Upon leaving, all of your collected items will turn into non-functional iron crystals and iron gems, but they will regain functionality after re-entering the Glittering Depths, provided they have not been altered. Altered items might not function the same way inside the Glittering Depths! Alter an item at your own risk!”

All of this mana crystal magic he had made would translate to Veird just fine.

All of these metamonds and metirons, and how this here specifically functioned… Well.

Erick was 100% certain that he could make a mana crystal that functioned like a metamond, if he could actually make such a thing on Veird. If mana crystals were allowed, but they weren’t, except in very extreme cases that actually violated the rules of the Script; like with Erick’s Full Wizard crystal form. Now that was Wizardry. A clear violation of the Script.

Of course, one just had to go to Ar’Cosmos to make a mana crystal; so that problem was solved. Erick even had some mana crystals back home that worked just fine outside of Ar’Cosmos. They couldn’t be made here on Veird, but they could certainly be imported.

Mana crystals were just pure enchantments in crystal form, and those worked across all worldly boundaries.

The metirons would be ‘tougher’ to make on Veird. Such a creation would have to be some heavily runed thing. But Erick had already done such workings on the iron Gates of the Gate Network, so maybe it wouldn’t be too bad?

Atunir had even said that all this stuff in here could work outside a Second Script Glittering Depths space, with a bit of work. Spaceships, and junk like that.

… It was quite possible that, if not for certain transformations that happened around the entrance of the Glittering Depths...

Erick asked the dungeon, “Glittering Depths? You purposefully transform these meta-diamonds into non-functional things, don’t you?” Erick looked up, asking, “They could work fine on Veird, but you ensure that they do not. Correct?”

Kinder walked into the room. “Talking to yourself, sir?”

Erick turned to the man from Greensoil. “… You weren’t there a moment ago.”

Kinder frowned. “I was outside, sitting on that bench out there and trying not to fall asleep, guarding you while you worked and prepared to interrupt you in case you were needed for defense.” Kinder professed, “I take my job seriously, sir, even if you seem not to, being inside those chambers for hours on end.”

Erick rolled his eyes. “Yeah yeah.”

“So what did you make, sir?” Kinder stood on his tippy toes, craning his neck to see all the stuff Erick had laid out on the tables, as he asked, “Not much weaponry?”

The weaponry would come later, as soon as Erick truly figured out what he wanted his weapon to be, but he had made a bunch of low level metamonds that would serve that function… Probably. Those metamonds rested in his fanny pack, for he did not want them on display.

But since Kinder was asking about it… Did Kinder have viewing access on Erick, here in the dungeon?

… Or was he just being curious, and worried, because he didn’t see any weaponry, and weaponry was what was needed to combat the dangers out there, upon the plains.

Eh.

“I’m still thinking of what I want the weapon to be, so for now, it’s a bunch of defensive stuff.” Erick waved his hand with the Ring of [Identify] over the items, saying, “Nothing too interesting; just preparation for bigger fights and faster movement. I decided to unattune a few things since I’m close to my 10/10 metamond cap.”

Breastplate of [Regenerating Health], unattuned artifact, 250/250

You have Health when wearing this breastplate. 1000 Health. Regenerates with your mana.

Bracelet of [Hidden Wind], attuned artifact, 100/100

Step lively through the wind and the light. 1 mana per step.

Shield of [Reflection], unattuned artifact, 250/250

Reflect high-grade and lesser targeted spellwork.

Wand of [Rejuvenation], unattuned artifact, 100/100

For 5 mana, grant a touched target increased healing, condensing a week of recuperation to 10 minutes.

Erick passed his hand across his belt, saying, “This one is perhaps the most interesting.”

Belt of Many Functions, attuned artifact, 50/50, 50/50, 50/50

Blessed Memory, self, perfect buff, 1 mana per minute

Your mind is a palace.

Eternal Benediction, self, perfect buff, 1 mana per minute

Your body is a fortress.

Benediction of the Unseen, self, perfect buff, 1 mana per minute

Mana does not record your presence unless you desire it so.

Mana Density Multiplier: 75%

“I changed up almost everything about the belt. I added mental and physical benediction-class buffs, and I made the [Unsensible] a lot better. Still has that Density Multiplier stuff, though, since it exists partially outside the body. I imagine it’ll tick maybe 10 mana per minute in a full mana vacuum, but that’s still fine.” Erick looked at Kinder, adding, “You want me to make you any copies of any of this? That offer is only if you want to go out and hunt red tabards with me, though.”

Kinder’s mouth hung open as he read the floating text. He was at a loss for words long before Erick began explaining what he had made. It was only several seconds after Erick stopped talking, that Kinder exclaimed, “… HOW?!” And then he gushed, “The mana costs alone are crazy! You actually managed to do a true at-cost [Rejuvenation]?! And what you did to [Unsensible]. Fuck. That’s a lot better than—”

Kinder stopped talking as he realized he was saying too much.

Erick just smiled. “I’ve had a whole lot of practice with spellwork in all sorts of environments long before I came here, Kinder.”

“… Apparently, sir.”

Erick nodded, then asked, “Are you ready to drop this act and tell me why you chose to follow me into this dungeon? Who are you working for?”

With rote practice, Kinder said, “Not sure what that means, sir.” He added, “And I’m working for Insten, for freedom from our oppressors. Same as you.”

“… Sure. I’ll believe you for a while.” Erick began putting on some of the items he had created, starting with the belt. As the metal slipped around his waist Erick gasped at the sudden feeling of his senses heightening and his mind clearing. Once again, he was able to count Kinder’s individual eyelashes, and see all of his various microexpressions that very much separated the man from the NPCs elsewhere in Marii’s keep. The man was barely sweating, but he was still sweating. He was nervous, and well trained not to show it. As Erick felt his body rapidly acclimate to being stronger, and to the entire world feeling less oppressive in gravity, in general exhaustion, and all sorts of ways, Erick said, “Now that’s the good stuff.”

The shield and breastplate remained on the table, for they would be too bulky for what he needed to do next, but Erick put the Bracelet of [Hidden Wind] on his unoccupied wrist. Erick flicked power through the bracelet and the weight of the world seemed to lose its grip on him, as though Erick was airstepping with [Air Body]. Light and Shadow began to bend around him, fucking up his sight and turning the world into the reflection of a carnival mirror, but Erick just waited a moment, and the funhouse effect dimmed as the magic settled down. He could once again see where he was looking, as the magic began to recognize where he was looking and clear a path.

Erick moved his head around, and his clarity of sight lagged behind, but it caught up well enough.

He stepped backward—

And catapulted backward, smashing right into a wall and crashing to the ground, to land on his hands and end the [Hidden Steps] effect. He rose, with all the dignity of a man who had experienced a non-lethal, embarrassing spell malfunction. It was not the first time for Erick. “… That’ll take some practice.”

With wide eyes, and completely glossing over Erick’s malfunction, Kinder said, “You copied Scout’s magic.”

“Aye. Seemed simple enough to make.”

“She got that [Invisible Steps]— [Hidden Steps] is what it’s called. Not [Invisible Steps]. She got that bracelet from the Mountain for meritorious service. Cost them… I’m not sure what it cost them. But I know that those bracelets are near-impossible to get right. You can’t make them with a spell tome.”

Erick smiled again. “I’ve been making magic for a long time, Kinder.” Erick picked up the broken Staff of the Anti-Magus, saying, “And now I’m going to make a sniper metiron, use it to clear out this floor of the dungeon, and then come back here to play around with mana crystals.” He spoke to the air, “If the mana crystals made here still work on Veird, like I think they will, I might spend a good month here playing around with all these mana crystals.”

Words appeared.

Invalid command. Are you in need of special assistance, Ashes Woodfield? Transport to the entrance is just an ask away.

“Nope. Thanks though.” Erick hefted the half staff in his hands, and felt kinda good about the thrill of discovery he was about to embark upon. “Gonna make my own help.” He turned to Kinder, and said, “Tell me if I’m needed to repel an attack, or whatever.”

Kinder slammed his fist against his chest without missing a beat. “Before you do that, sir! We could use that wand of [Drinking Food] for the people, sir!”

“… Oh. Right.” Erick looked to the mana chambers. “I was in there for a while, wasn’t I?”

Kinder added, “And. Uh. Since you made a [Rejuvenation] wand… Few of our healers survived, but Architect Marii has some Healing Magics so we’re limping along, but we don’t got any proper priests with real healing, so we’re kinda hurting. A lot. Any additional healing would help.”

Erick felt a sudden stab of shame. “Right.” Erick put the broken staff back down and grabbed the two requested wands. First thing Erick did was attune the Wand of [Rejuvenation], bringing him up to 10/10 metamonds in use. Attuning took little more than a will-to-power and an empty metamond slot, but un-attuning took 10 minutes, so he couldn’t switch his loadout in combat, but outside of a battle it was easy enough to do that. He’d remove one or both of his utility wands later. For now, the Wand of [Rejuvenation] and the Wand of [Drinking Food] got used. “Let’s go feed and heal some people.”

Kinder almost glowed as a smile broke across his face. “Thank you, sir.”

- - - -

As soon as Erick saw the tired, dirty, hungry, and injured people he had left in the care of the Marii and her people, Erick realized he had fucked up. It didn’t matter if they were all NPCs, and they felt as much real pain as a slime could feel, it was still fucked up to leave them in that pain. Marii was currently kneeling beside a man on a blanket on the ground, trying to heal the man, her hands glowing cerulean blue. It wasn’t working so well. She was covered in blood and she had a bunch of assistants helping her, either with preparing people for healing later, or doing aftercare, but there were at least twenty people that needed healing, and nine of them were comatose. Added to that, there were a hundred other people in the courtyard, and undoubtedly more stuffed away in all parts of the castle. The place was packed before Erick had gotten here with his rescues, and now it was overflowing.

Everyone was getting in everyone’s ways.

Erick needed to take care of the people he already had rescued, if for no other ‘real’ reason than to make sure this place ran better than it currently was. Erick instantly roped Kinder into helping him, but Kinder seemed prepared for that even before Erick asked.

Soon, Erick had gone through the crowd, tapping the most injured people with [Rejuvenation], while Kinder got the kitchens up and running. After Erick was done in the courtyard, he went to those kitchens and held his Wand of [Drinking Food] over a large, self-heating black pot and began filling it up with lukewarm oatmeal, while Kinder got the bowls and spoons ready. Marii’s base was quite large and well defended, but it was meant for a crew of about 20 people. The pipes still carried water into the castle from somewhere, but the place had run out of food as soon as it started taking in refugees, which Erick guessed had started yesterday, and then continued on even after Erick had arrived several hours ago. Erick watched, right then, as the front doors to the courtyard opened and more refugees showed up and filed into the castle.

There were probably 500 or 600 people here, now.

And all of them seemed hungry.

The line to Erick’s food cauldron was thickening up, just like the oatmeal inside the cauldron itself. It actually began to look appetizing, too, once it wasn’t so liquidy. Erick didn’t have to organize anything. The soldiers got that done, while Kinder ladled them bowls. Erick had more mana in him than just for making oatmeal, though, so he tapped the people who passed by with a [Rejuvenation] from his other wand, to ensure everyone was in good, healthy order.

It was simple, good work, even if it was done inside a memory of a land long past, the people were rather more memories than real themselves, and Erick was cutting into his goals of playing around with mana crystals. There was always time to help people, and this way, Erick got a chance to see everyone in the castle.

Two hours later, as the last person passed through with a bowl, Erick offered a tap of [Rejuvenation], but the soldier shook their head. They explained that they had already been through the line three times.

When it was over, Erick happily said to Kinder, “I haven’t been able to do anything that simple and nice for people in a long time. I kinda miss it.”

Kinder side-eyed Erick. “But you do this all the time—? Ah. The healing is new.”

Erick chuckled. “I usually work on a much larger scale than this. It gets impersonal at that scale.”

“You must have hit your head pretty hard out there.”

“I probably did.” Erick stretched, popping his back, and then rolling his shoulders. He put his wands back into his back fannypack, and said, “Time to make a magical sniping staff and kill some memories of Riam.”

Kinder muttered to himself, “Weird coping mechanism, but alright.”

Erick almost tried to prove his sincerity of words with some hard evidence that the people here were not full people, that they were just facsimiles; Erick had seen every single person in the castle as they went through his food line, after all. The easiest ‘proof’ that no one here was real was that the people around here repeated the same words whenever you asked them questions.

A better proof lay in the souls of these NPCs. Every single person in this castle, except for Erick, had a soul as thin and barely-there as a slime. The dungeon had given these NPCs some complicated instructions, for sure. But they were still fake people.

Kinder had some sort of obfuscation on him that made his soul appear like all the rest of the NPCs. Marii had the same thing on her, too… Probably. Marii was much more of an NPC than Kinder. Erick had caught the red-head saying the exact same thing, word for word, to the people she healed more in-depth than Erick was able to heal, which she had continued to do the entire time Erick was making food.

Erick wasn’t going to say anything about souls and the nature of reality to anyone here, though, because that reminded him too much of what Melemizargo used to say about all the people of Veird, except for when he spoke of Erick, Rozeta, or Jane.

- - - -

Magic was weird outside of the Script, Erick thought to himself, as he entered the metiron workshop.

There was no true Mana Altering outside of the Script, for starters.

People were born with the mana they had, and they had to work hard to discover what they were good at, or figure out how to manually Mana Alter, which still wasn’t a pure sort of thing. But in the Script, the Skill Mana Altering allowed anyone to conjure whatever mana they were trying to conjure from the shared pool of Script mana that everyone contributed to.

Erick had long ago learned aura control, and singing to the mana to ‘flavor’ his own mana properly, but if he was casting, for instance, a plain [Water Bolt] or other basic Water spell from the Script, then the Script would give him Water mana for that spell. If he were to hum the tune of Elemental Water, what he was truly doing there was helping the mana, and thus the Script, to properly target Water mana to give him for that Water Magic.

Casting Water Magic on his own, through aura control and Benevolence and self-creation, was a lot more difficult. He could still manually Mana Alter, of course. Not only did Benevolence lend itself very well to becoming any Element Erick wanted it to become, but Erick was also rather good at manual magic.

And, of course, mana was possibility, and possibility can change if it is sufficiently primed to change.

That’s what the Glittering Depths was doing here with mana crystals.

Mana crystals, on their own, were very, very good at innately Mana Altering all the mana that passed through them. This was because mana crystals, much like Erick singing to the mana, caused a harmonic convergence in the nearby mana, which propagated a localized change in the nature of the mana that passed through or near the mana crystal.

So what happened here, with these metirons and metamonds, was that people pumped mana into their meta-irons, and the metiron would act as a conductor for the metamonds, allowing that mana to pass through that metamond, which was a mana crystal chock full of alterings, shapings, and the imbuing of intent, to create magic. That magic would then get conducted back through the metiron, and happen as it was directed to happen.

People were able to make mana do the same sort of things through other sorts of enchanted objects, like wands of [Fireball] on Veird, made with various Elemental Fire materials and spellwork, or like with Erick’s manalight-infused All Stat rings, which was a resonance of a different sort. That particular resonance between wavelength of light and Script-assigned colors caused a confluence of reactions in a soul which caused an empowerment of Stats. Even runed metals, as one would use in a runic web or other sorts of enchantments, were just words inscribed into metal so that the Script and mana itself could understand and then act upon those words. All of magic and enchanting were simply ways for people to communicate with the mana, and for the mana to respond back.

What this dungeon was doing with mana crystals was like… Higher order mana crystal magic.

Erick had some experience with mana crystals before, but not nearly enough. Here, in this dungeon, he was getting some rather good experience.

And so, Erick picked up the broken Staff of the Anti-Magus and rolled the meter-long length of silver metal in his hands. He inspected the tangle of wires and branch-like extensions at the top of the staff.

He considered Mana Altering, and he wondered what he wanted to make of this weapon, exactly. Through some clever combinations of the basic six types of metamonds he had found on the battlefields outside (or been rewarded for rescuing people), Erick could make literally any small magic he desired. He didn’t simply have access to Stone and Water, he also had Ooze when Stone and Water came together, and if he added in a twist of the right Intent, he had Elemental Tree.

He could even take some Elemental Healing, throw some proper Bloody intent at it, and make Elemental Blood, even though he had no Elemental Blood starter metamonds at all.

… Erick hummed at that thought.

Elemental Blood might be one of the best options for offensive use here, in the Glittering Depths, where most people didn’t have Health, since Health was the primary way in which Blood Magic was defended against. Any Blood Magic would probably rip through the NPC enemies out there like a knife through paper.

And Erick had Health, now, so he wouldn’t be vulnerable to his own weapon. All he needed to do was wear that Breastplate of [Health Regeneration] he had made earlier. That’d be 1000 Health right there, which was a lot for the average person to have.

And yet, as Erick set down the broken staff, and went over to the modeling wax, he considered the wider implications of creating a super-weapon inside this dungeon. He was rather sure that he could do exactly that, too; he could make a super weapon.

Here, in this dungeon, Erick could make an auto-killing magic that could shoot as fast as an automatic machine gun, firing auto-targeting [Blood Bolt]s that mowed down whole groups of people. Such a creation was what the dungeon wanted for the completion of floor 2, after all. A super weapon that could alter the course of war.

… Erick did not like killing people, even if they were ‘not real’.

He much preferred helping people.

Looking back on it, he was kinda appalled how easily he had devolved into killing those Riam soldiers, in the Rescue and Revenge quests. Usually he tried to talk down situations like this, but then again, usually he was far and away the most powerful person in… Well almost the whole world, actually. On Veird, he could force people to bend to his will, and ensure everyone came out the other side of those confrontations without getting messed up too much.

But here, at this lower power level, Erick had gone with the flow of the dungeon, and killed people he would have otherwise tried to ‘save’… Even though there is no saving any of these people.

They weren’t real. They couldn’t actually be saved.

People had tried to save NPCs they found in dungeons long before now. Usually what happened was a person had to physically drag their desired NPC out of a dungeon, because the NPC would never go willingly. The NPC would usually be screaming and fighting their captor the whole way, too, because they knew that absolute death awaited them if they stepped outside of a dungeon. Which is exactly what would happen in almost all cases. An unawakened NPC would break like shattered magic long before they reached the dungeon entrance.

But sometimes, some NPCs would wander to the dungeon entrance on their own, notice the barrier that their friends couldn’t even see, and then they would step through, and become a real person. If Erick weren’t so sure that Kinder was already a real person, pretending to be fake, then he would try to rescue the man from the Glittering Depths, or at least show him the front door.

He had done that a lot when he helped Destiny to liberate the Freelands and their slave dungeons, all those years ago.

Was this another one of those situations? Was the Glittering Depths a slave dungeon?

Probably not.

There was no real danger that Erick was killing real people, here. Any weapon he made would just get used against NPCs, which, while horrible, wasn’t all that bad.

But people and ideas and objects came out of dungeons all the time. Memories and possibilities in the mana turned from subjective Reality, to mundane factual reality. And in that case...

Erick looked down at the blocks of wax he was about to carve, and at the weapon he was about to make…

This weapon would be real.

As Erick considered what he was going to make, he knew for a fact that he could reproduce this weapon outside of the Glittering Depths, as soon as he figured out a way to make mana crystals on Veird.

He could always ‘tunnel’ out of the Glittering Depths into another dungeon somewhere nearby, like Kiri had done during her Worldly Path. She had gone into the Grand Dungeon at Freeland and come out at the Benevolence Grand Dungeon at Candlepoint. Erick could maybe do the same thing and bring an intact meta-weapon out onto Veird, or at least the mana crystals, which was the big thing.

Maybe. It might work that way.

Anyway!

Erick didn’t have [Metalshape] here in this dungeon, so he had to do this the long way.

He grabbed some bulk wax and some heated wands and sculpting tools, and began fashioning the general shape of the weapon he would make out of the broken ‘Staff of the Anti-Magus’. The base metal was already primed to cut through magical defenses, if Erick was understanding that wording correctly, so that was his starting position. All of that would probably vanish as soon as he turned the metal liquid, though.

So really, Erick could make anything he wanted…

Form follows function, and Erick had some functions he might be putting into this weapon already. Those functions weighed on Erick’s mind, and in his fanny pack. They had all been tests; little more than aura controlled mana, cycled down to crystal and imbued with perfect intent, even if the final product remained unknown, for now.

And that had worked out well, because Erick was very good at making magic, and this stuff was the most basic magic there was.

Long Bolt, instant, long range, 5 mana

A bolt unerringly strikes a distant target.

Targeted Insta-Bolt, instant, long range, 7 mana

Aim a bolt to unerringly and near-instantly strike a specific area on a target.

Bleeding Bolt, instant, long range, 7 mana

A bolt of blood unerringly strikes a target, causing the target to bleed.

Burrowing Bolt, instant, long range, 7 mana

A bolt of burrowing force unerringly strikes a target, inflicting deep damage

Decay Bolt, instant, long range, 7 mana

A bolt of spreading decay unerringly strikes a target, inflicting a spreading rot.

Explosion Bolt, instant, long range, 7 mana

A bolt of explosive force unerringly strikes a target, and detonates.

Multi-Bolt, instant, long range, 10 mana

A bolt of force homes onto a target, before splitting and inevitably striking multiple times.

All of them were created with the lowest power settings that Erick could manage; 2-to-5 mana for a delivery system and the rest of the spell cost for the desired effect. Separately, they were almost useless. On Veird, under the Script, not a single one of these spells would do more than 10 or 25 damage to a person. That [Bleeding Bolt] would probably hit for no actual damage at all, cause a bleed only if it hit a vulnerable area, and then prevent a body from naturally staunching that bleed for maybe ten seconds, at most. But together, and here in the dungeon where no one had any Health, this sort of combination would be devastating against a single target.

Which is exactly what Erick planned to use them for.

So Erick sculpted wax in the shape of a sniper staff.

- - - -

Half an hour after he began the wax sculpture, that part of the process was done. After setting the wax with spurs and vents, to allow metal to flow in while letting air escape, Erick plunged the staff and all of its little parts into a slurry of quick-set plaster. He set the thing to dry inside a hooded drying station, where all Erick had to do was flick a switch on the wall and air rushed through the chamber, pulling out all moisture with it. Five minutes later, Erick pulled the cast back out of the drying hood, plunged it back into the plaster slurry, and then poured dry sand from a large tub over the wet mold. When it was good and sandy, Erick put it back in the dryer. He repeated this process three times, growing the shell of plaster around the mold deeper and deeper, until the original sniper staff’s shape was lost to the layers of sand and plaster surrounding it.

While it dried one more time, and did not crack, Erick smiled a little, enjoying the act of creation, as he grabbed a crucible from the furnace supplies. That crucible went into the open-top furnace, and Erick shut the lid before he flicked another switch. Fire burned brightly all around the crucible, casting red light into the room. Another flick of another switch turned on the heat vents, and some of the heat of the furnace shunted outside.

Three minutes later, the crucible was red hot, and Erick stuck the broken Staff of the Anti-Magus into the container. That would sit for a while before it started to melt.

Erick had time to go put the dried wax mold into the mold furnace, which is what he did next, turning it upside down and setting it inside. The mold furnace had a window in the front, so as Erick flicked the switch on that machinery, he watched the wax melt out of the container, into a bucket below the furnace, clearing out the mold. The mold would have to fully burn out, to remove all the wax inside, so Erick kept an eye on it while he went back to the metal furnace.

The staff was just beginning to melt down, into the crucible.

Erick grabbed some tongs and ensured that the melt went into the container without spilling.

Not too long now, and he’d have the base weapon.

Everything went off without a hitch. The staff melted down perfectly, making a molten puddle of silver metal inside the hot crucible. The mold burned out properly, leaving behind an empty space for Erick to fill with the silver metal. With some large tongs and some careful maneuvering, Erick grabbed the hot mold, and set the mold into a pouring space recessed into the ground to prevent catastrophic spills. If the mold should break, then it would break down there, and not spill out over the workshop floor.

It had taken Erick two hours of rather slow, manual work to get to this point, but everything went quickly in the last minute.

Erick grabbed some heavy tongs that were suspended from the ceiling, to help offset the weight of metal projects, then he popped open the furnace, secured the crucible in the tongs, and he levered the molten metal out. Burning heat filled the air, but Erick had on a facemask and some workshop pants and armguards. He wasn’t used to needing to use tools to survive heat like this, but it was what it was.

He looked down into the crucible. There appeared to be no contaminants in the metal to skim off the top, so Erick went right to pouring that metal into the heated mold. As liquid metal flowed into the mold it burbled and spat, but it settled down into the cavity, and held.

And the mold did not break.

Erick smiled as he began putting everything away and cleaning up all the messes he had made, as the sniper staff cooled in its container.

You couldn’t make magical metals like this on Veird; magical metals needed to be carefully handled there, without allowing them to turn molten at any point in the process, for if a magical metal turned molten, then they lost all magical power. Celesteel became normal platinum. Prismasteel became normal platinum. A lot of magical metals became normal platinum when they turned molten.

So you had to work magical metals carefully; cold forging as much as you could.

If there was anything specifically different that Glittering Depths was doing in order to be called a ‘Second Script’, it was this ability for metal to retain its magical, conductive properties, after being heated to a molten state. In fact, the only way to truly change the function of a bit of meta-iron was to do what Erick was doing right now, and burn out all that had come before.

At least that’s what Erick figured would happen, based on clues here and there.

Otherwise, as with Erick’s Rod of the Lightning Guardian, if he applied any sort of mana to the staff at all, then it would just revert to its broken shape. Which would be bad, when he wanted to make a whole weapon.

Erick was probably too eager to bust open the mold, but it was cool enough after twenty minutes of resting. So he used the hanging tongs to grab the filled mold and toss it into the water bath. Steam burst out of the bath as sand and plaster boiled away from the metal inside. Five more minutes after that, Erick used the hanging tongs to grab the metal out of the water and shake off the bits of plaster and sand, stuck here and there along the sniper staff’s length. Then he threw the ‘staff’ back into water, to cool it off enough to work with.

Several minutes later, Erick pulled the metal out of the water and got to work with some heavy brushing from a cow-hair bristle comb. That removed most of the rest of the surface shit. Over the next half hour, Erick used some heavy duty clippers to break away the spurs and vents from the staff, and some grinding wheels to knock off other non-staff objects from the surface of the creation. Some more grinding refined the look of the whole thing.

It was still kinda warm when Erick was 90% finished with it.

The ‘staff’ was 110 centimeters in overall length, and shaped mostly like a very large wand. It had a 2 centimeter wide pointed end, followed by a gentle taper to a 3 centimeter wide top end, capped off with a faceted silver-ball top. A curved handle extended from the side of the staff, just before the faceted top, making it look quite a lot like a cane… So maybe Erick should have been calling it a cane in his head this whole time.

Some decorative runes started around halfway up the length of the weapon and continued upward, to adorn the handle with the words: ‘REPENT ALL SINNERS AND BE SPARED’.

The whole working wasn’t too fancy, and maybe Erick had gone too far in with that lettering, but it felt correct, and so he had done it. There was no achievement notification from the dungeon, though. Which was fine. It wasn’t even a real weapon yet.

Erick tapped his Ring of [Identify] across the nascent artifact.

Primed Staff of Power (depleted), unattuned artifact, ~/500

Erick hefted the cane in his hands, spun it around a little to feel the balance, gripped the handle and then pointed it at the wall, and played around with it a bit more.

It would serve.

Erick divested himself of every metiron he had except for his [Meditation] necklace and his new staff, and then he grabbed a bunch of stuff including the metamonds he had made earlier, and went to the mana chamber.

- - - -

Erick stood off-center of the mana chamber, holding his staff outward, channeling perfectly clear Force mana into the length of runed silver.

The mana that the dungeon assigned to him was Benevolence-flavored, so it wouldn’t work for all sorts of magic. But that was fine. Erick had been Mana Altering manually for a while, for the Script did almost this exact same thing with ‘assigning mana’, so all it took was a hum of a Forceful nature and a bit of normal aura control, and the staff in his hands had begun pumping Force into the chamber.

It looked like mirage ripples filling the air, and felt like being in a stuffy room.

Rather quickly after Erick started, focusing circles lit on every interior wall and began collecting that Forceful mana into the center of the room. That act of collection reminded Erick of a reverse-ripple in a pond.

When the mana in the chamber reached saturation, Erick was finally able to extend his aura past his body, to reach into that collection space in the center. He already had a fair number of meta-diamonds that would serve as the basis of his sniper staff, but he still needed to prime the staff.

His first act of creation was to tickle the mana in the center into forming a mana crystal that he had already made once.

A little hum of Force, a Forceful touch of aura, and Erick created a sculpture of mana shaping, and distant intent. It was simple gridwork spellwork that took but a moment to stabilize inside his controlling aura. When it finally looked correct, Erick slowly pulled his aura back, allowing the ripples of mana in the air to actually coalesce.

A dollop of a gem held in the air, floating on ripples of Force.

Erick plucked it out of the air with a tap of his aura and the gem fell into his waiting hand. He activated his Ring of [Identify].

Long Bolt, instant, long range, 5 mana

A bolt unerringly strikes a distant target.

Erick grinned. Yes. This was correct.

His staff was already filled with power, so Erick put the gem he had created back into the floating center of the chamber. And then he poked it with his staff.

The gem slipped into the shooting tip of the staff, and then barreled all the way down the length of it, before coming to rest inside the faceted top, near the handle. It surfaced atop one of those facets, but mostly remained under the silver metiron, like a white gem floating in a pool of mercury.

Erick [Identify]ed the staff.

Staff of the [Long Bolt], attuned artifact, 250/250

Shoot an unerring bolt at a distant target, dealing minimal damage. 5 mana per bolt.

Erick smiled.

It wasn’t much to look at now, and the maximum capacity of the staff had gone down, but that would change soon enough.

Erick created a second [Long Bolt] gem and joined that one to his staff, to join the [Long Bolt] already inside the artifact.

Staff of the [Improved Long Bolt], attuned artifact, 275/275

Shoot an unerring bolt at a distant target, dealing minimal damage. 7 mana per bolt.

Ahh…

That was good.

This was probably going to work.

But first, Erick broke the gems he had created inside the staff. Force mana filled the air, some of it going back into the staff itself, and some trying to recollect in the center of the mana chamber. Erick held that Force back, preventing it from reforming, as he [Identify]ed the staff.

Staff of Controlled Power (depleted), attuned artifact, 500/500

“Mana crystals are kinda odd!” Erick said, chuckling.

Erick wasn’t exactly sure how mana crystals worked like they did, or why the capacitance of the staff jumped around like that, but he could certainly do some experiments to find out! He’d probably have to do more experiments with [Identify], too, since that spell was always an odd one. Under the Script, an [Identify] usually produced mental feedback, informing the caster of the target’s nature based on one’s own understanding of the [Identify]ed target. But this [Identify] was producing results in the air, for all to see…

Sure, you could do that with [Identify], too, but the Glittering Depths seemed to only have this visual option. Erick wondered what would happen if he did that Book Magic sort of [Identify]-on-dungeon-cores magic that Quilatalap had taught him the other week.

He’d have to do that, sometime.

But for now, Erick turned his focus to one problem at a time, and aura controlled the rippling Force in the center of the room, turning it back into a [Long Bolt]. The [Long Bolt] went into the staff, forming the base for what was to come…

- - - -

An hour later, Erick exited the mana chamber with his new weapon in his hands.

With this weapon, he was far above the 10/10 metiron cap of the Glittering Depths, so he had some reorganizing to do. He was keeping the staff, of course. This thing had turned out better than Erick could have hoped.

Staff of Absolution, attuned artifact, 2000/2000

Trim the garden, so that all may grow stronger in the absence of corruption. 50 mana per activation.

Strong spells in the Script usually resulted in blue boxes that were more evocative than truly descriptive. Apparently, [Identify] in the Glittering Depths suffered from the same sort of nebulousness.

The overall shape of the staff was the same as it had been pre-imbuing, but now the faceted-metal head of the ‘cane’ had turned into an iridescent rainbow gem, covered in wrapping metal that almost formed a butt of a hunting rifle. It had no trigger, but it did have a sight. That sight was little more than a protrusion at the firing end, and another protrusion part of the way down from the handle.

As for the rest of his gear…

Erick moved some stuff around on the tables outside the mana chambers, and began narrowing down what he truly wanted to wear, and have. All the excess junk went into a chest in the room beside the mana chamber room. He did keep the two utility wands he had made, but they went into his fanny pack; unattuned. If needed, he could switch out those items later.

And this was his loadout, now.

“Status,” Erick said.

- -

Ashes Woodfield (9 saves remaining)

Health: 1000/1000

MP per day: 8500

Meta-Irons: 3700, 0 in storage

Meta-Diamonds: 10/10, 0 in storage

Rod of the Lightning Guardian, 1000/1000

Staff of Absolution, 2000/2000

Breastplate of [Regenerating Health], 250/250

Bracelet of [Hidden Wind], 100/100

Bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation], 100/100

Necklace of [Meditation], 50/50

Ring of [Identify] 50/50

Belt of Many Functions, [Blessed Memory], [Eternal Benediction], [Benediction of the Unseen], 50/50, 50/50, 50/50

Unused Meta-Irons: Wand of [Drinking Food] ~/200, Wand of [Regeneration] ~/100

Unused Meta-Diamonds: [Murky], [Flaming Ooze]

- -

He wanted to keep the Shield of [Reflection], but he was tight for room, so his Ring of [Identify] won out in the end, and mostly because all this stuff was so much different than what Erick was used to seeing out on Veird.

Like the Breastplate of [Regenerating Health]! That just wasn’t possible on Veird under normal circumstances... Or maybe it was! Erick didn’t know. Magic items on Veird constantly degraded, especially if they got used regularly and moved around all the time. Even Erick’s Gates needed replacing occasionally, when some odd magics happened around them, disrupting the flow of power inside them and causing a catastrophic rusting.

The spells in his belt were another anomaly. They were like permanent self-auras, and they didn’t break from constant use, like all other highly-mobile enchantments usually broke.

Erick’s All Stat rings had been a revolution in enchanting when he had worked out how to make those work, and these things could be another revolution in enchanting when he figured out how to get mana crystals like these on Veird… If that would even work!

Anticipation and excitement trilled through Erick’s chest. He was excited for a lot of reasons.

“And I have claimed the number one spot on the Most Decorated rankings!”

That should get Clarice Icewind’s attention. No need to go chasing her down to ask her about her experiences [Witness]ing this dungeon if she came to him.

But for now! It was time to test his new loadout, and then go clean up some corruption in this garden. Maybe he’d get the quest completion for making a ‘weapon to end the war’ once he actually ended the war in this location…

“Or maybe this new staff is shit!” Erick laughed.

No way to know without testing!

- - - -

Erick stood behind the parapets at the top of the wall that surrounded all of Marii’s castle. He had thought he might have been alone, but even up here the place was crowded. Probably because it allowed a certain amount of individual space, as long as one watched out and called out problems before they could threaten the castle. That had happened a few times since Erick and his refugees had arrived here earlier in the day, and Marii had been quick to action each time, doing whatever it was she had to do to ensure the castle remained impregnable. Or at least that’s what Erick had gathered after the fact. Erick had never felt the movement of the castle to a different hill, or illusion magics activating, or even heard any of those battles at all.

Whatever spellwork Marii had in this place was either very, very good, or the dungeon was cheating with those attacks and making this a ‘safe zone’. Erick was going to look into all of that later. It’d be a lot easier to defend certain places if those places moved around at the drop of a hat!

Anyway.

Erick felt the wind brush through his hair as he gazed out across the land. Marii’s castle was at the top of a hill —one of six— that overlooked… Nothing, really. For maybe ten or fifteen kilometers around, as far as Erick could see, all there were were low hills, and a lot of corpses.

Far to the west lay a lot of burning places, with black smoke drifting into the dim blue sky. To the north lay mountains, though Erick could only guess at how far away those were. Erick guessed that he could ‘complete’ floor 2 by spending a month escaping this place and going to those mountains, to meet up with the real resistance, but Erick wasn’t going to do that.

He was going to fight.

Erick placed the jeweled end of his cane-sized staff against his right shoulder, then he put his hands upon the engraved length of the weapon and looked down the top of the weapon, down the sight. He lined up the front sight of the weapon, just above the very end of the staff, and turned his gaze to a target on the… hill down below…

No targets down there at all. The hillside was clean of all obstructions, which of course it was. No one wanted obstructions around a defensive location. People could hide behind those obstructions, and that was the opposite of being safe.

Eventually, Erick set down his staff and walked around the rim of the castle, looking for—

Ah.

A boulder. It was completely buried and served more as a flat expanse of the hillside than any sort of real target. But it would do. One end of the boulder was wider than the other, and the whole thing sat maybe 120 meters away, down on the side of the hill.

Erick set his staff against his shoulder, took aim, and said, “Fire.”

An imperceptible spot of Force and darker magics spat from the end of the staff and instantly struck the boulder on the skinny end. The staff made no sound at all, but the impact on the boulder sent a rapid grouping of ‘spack-crack-tap-tap-spack’ into the air. It was the sound of a handful of pellets from a pellet gun all hitting stone at almost the same moment.

There was no visible damage upon the stone. Maybe a few dark spots, but nothing else truly visible.

That was by design, though. The spell that came out of this artifact was not meant to injure non living things.

Erick shot quite a few more targets, getting a feel for his range and his accuracy and testing out how the staff fired through a simple tap of his aura, instead of a verbal command; it worked as well as all his other items. 

A head-sized, distant rock got several marks, while the grass around it remained fine. The flat boulder got even more dots. It was only when Erick shot a particularly large lump of grass, that the true capabilities of the weapon appeared, causing a minor explosion and leaving a divot in the hillside.

That was just the effect on grass, though. The weapon wasn’t meant to kill grass. It was meant for much bloodier targets.

Erick kept firing.

The staff’s accuracy was rather phenomenal for up to 250 meters, with a rather steady decline after that. Targeting was impossible if Erick did not have a clear target in mind when shooting, and if his aim wasn’t rather close to where he was trying to hit. The staff had a minor amount of course correction —Bolt was the basis for this staff, after all— but the speed of the strike was so much that Erick’s aim needed to be rather close, or else the shot wouldn’t be able to curve fast enough to hit the target. The sights were not just for show.

Erick would have preferred some more practice with the weapon before he took it into an actual fight, but there was no time for that, apparently.

For Kinder had been poking his head out from the door at a tower near the wall for about half an hour now. He had pulled back every time Erick almost looked his way, too. The man was not plotting something, as far as Erick could tell; he was nervous about something, and he had no idea how to approach.

Erick felt he had gotten good enough with the staff to stop, and he had finally had enough of Kinder’s whatever-he-was-doing, so Erick called out to the man, “Kinder!”

There was no movement in the doorway.

“Kinder,” Erick repeated. “Get out here.”

… Kinder slowly stepped out, into the light. He stood tall and nervous, as he said, “Uh. Don’t mean to interrupt your time, but we could all use more food?”

Erick blinked a bit, and then he looked out across the land. The sunstone was getting kinda close to the horizon, wasn’t it? Ah. Well. Quilatalap wasn’t the only one who could get lost in his work.

And so, Erick took the Wand of [Drinking Food] out of his fanny pack on his lower back. “I guess it has been a few hours, hasn’t it.” He walked over and handed the wand to Kinder, asking, “Can you use it yourself? I unattuned it earlier.”

Kinder’s eyes went wide. “I could not take that from you, sir—”

Erick set his staff down and rummaged around for the Wand of [Rejuvenation], and then he tried to hand that over, too, saying, “I unattuned both of them.” Kinder wasn’t taking them, and he kept trying to say that he couldn’t possibly have that honor, so Erick grabbed the man’s right hand and slapped both wands into his hand, saying, “You get to feed and heal the people here, Kinder.” Erick pulled away, too fast for Kinder to refuse. “I’ve got other things to do.”

Kinder looked at the wands in his hand and great big tears began to fall. His voice cracked, as he said, “I can do this, sir! Leave it to me!”

Erick chuckled a little. “Good. Now where is Scout?” He picked his staff back up. “Unless you know of a better way to find the enemies out there?”

“Scout will want to work with you, but I think Architect Marii has some mapping magic, too.”

“Good man. Take me to it.”

- - - -

The sunstar dipped down toward the horizon, casting the hilly grasslands into deep shadows. Erick waited down in those deep shadows, at the bottom of a hill, crouched near stinking bodies and slippery gore. The shadows around him were thick, his bracelet of [Hidden Wind] keeping them that way, obscuring most of his body, while his eyes and sight lines remained unaffected.

Scout seemed completely unaffected by Erick’s hiding magics, too. She dropped out of the air three meters off to the side from Erick, bent low to the ground, already whispering, “Enemy spotted.” She pointed. “450 meters, that way.”

“Good. Stay out of the fight. If I fall, then return back to Marii’s, otherwise rejoin with me after the threat is gone.”

Scout wordlessly vanished back into the wind, her feet barely making a sound or a sight as she hopped away, and then paused near the bodies. As she stilled, she went completely invisible.

Erick broke his own near-invisibility by getting to his feet and stepping forward, up the hill. It was not a single step; it was ten, all at once, and effortlessly, all for the cost of one mana. Erick had almost fallen down several times when he first started using this ‘windstepping’, but he had gotten used to it fast enough. It was almost like using [Silent Movement], that Health-costing skill of the Script, but different, because [Silent Movement] cost 1 Health per meter moved; not one mana per step.

One mana was a pretty low price, Erick thought, as he sailed through the air, stepping lively, rushing up the side of the grassy lowlands. He stuck in the shadows, keeping away from the absolute tops of the hills as he made his way forward, toward the enemy.

In most situations, Erick would try to talk to these NPCs, to change the narrative in this dungeon, but the enemy here was way too strong and dedicated to ever give up the fight. Not when they were winning, anyway.

Maybe if Erick killed enough of them the remaining ones would surrender. That might be nice.

Erick barely crested the hill and saw the enemy camp. He fell into a crouch, letting the shadows crawl around him as he began to move much slower. If this [Hidden Steps] bracelet had some sort of ongoing cost for when Erick wasn’t actively using its stepping function, then that cost was too small to be noticed.

The camp had three stone towers at the top of a hill, along with a stone wall all the way around. It had been Shaped, for sure. The whole thing was maybe a hundred meters in diameter, and well defended. Several red-tabarded soldiers stood behind parapets on the walls, but only two of those wall-patrolling soldiers actually had eyes on the darkened land around the camp. Most of the people on the walls had eyes pointed inward, watching whatever was happening in the courtyard, roaring approval and making snide remarks at whatever was happening just beyond Erick’s sight—

A cheer broke the night, as some metal clashed with something wooden—

Someone screamed out for mercy, their voice echoing in the twilight, and then came silence and a grand roar of approval from the butchers of the camp. Even the people looking out into the dark had to turn their heads to the interior of the camp, to see what was happening.

Erick hoisted his ‘gun’ and set the gem pommel and silver handle against his shoulder. Once again, he tried to visualize what would happen if he went up to these NPCs and asked them to surrender peacefully. Would they be willing to end this war here and now? To go away, and never return?

That probably wouldn’t work out so well.

And worse, it would give away Erick’s moment of surprise.

Erick took aim at a guy on the wall; the one who was calling for the next prisoner to be brought forth.

There was no need to ask his weapon to ‘Fire!’. All it took was a tap of intent to trigger the weapon.

The business end of the staff sent out a trailing ripple of a mirage; the Bolt moving too fast and too quietly to be known before it hit.

And the man’s head exploded, followed fast by his chest, and then his upper arms. The detonation ended there. The crowd was still cheering as the caller for more blood turned into little more than a popped balloon of blackened blood himself.

Erick popped another three red-tabarded soldiers before the camp really understood what was happening, and even then, many people made the fatal mistake of staying on the walls, to try and see what was killing them. It wasn’t a very good response.

Ten kills and less than 5 seconds later, Erick repositioned; he pulled back, going backward, further out of sight, before he circled around and came up the other side of the encampment. By the time he was in position again, the hornet’s nest was thoroughly kicked. Red tabarded people hovered in the air, surrounded by thin shields that seemed to hold them aloft, as they swept spotlights all over the lands outside of their encampment.

Erick took aim at the nearest hovering woman. He fired. The translucent bubble popped as several pellets of magic cracked the Forceful surface. A lot of the attack was thwarted, but one of the scattering Bolts touched the mage inside, on her arm. That arm exploded in black blood as blackening Decay rapidly spread through the rest of the mage. The soldier dropped like a dead bird, right out of the sky.

Three minutes later, Erick had killed enough floating mages to force the camp to change tactics. They knew where he was now, though. The front gates opened, and soldiers rushed out of the encampment, surrounded by shields, aiming toward Erick, swords raised and magic empowering them with speed.

There was no Script Second inside the Glittering Depths, though, which was pretty interesting, from a resource perspective. Erick could theoretically have burned through his entire 2000 mana staff in a matter of moments, if he wanted. But since they only sent seven people rushing down at Erick, there in the shadows, it only cost Erick 450 mana and a few seconds to aim properly, at arms holding up swords, at legs below shields, at anything fleshy at all, to take down the entire grouping.

None of them had any Health at all, and even then, Erick was pretty sure that his staff would cut through that rather well. The only real defense against these supercharged Blood, Decay, Angry Benevolence, multipronged burrowing Bolts, was a thick layer of metal, or stone.

… And that seemed to be the majority of the camp?

Erick wasn’t sure, but he had time to kill and lots of enemies elsewhere, so he waited for [Mediation] to refill his weapon.

And then he [Hidden Step]ed toward the encampment, fast as he could, before circling around it again and stepping up off the hillside, easily leaping several vertical meters to land on the wall. Just like he suspected, there was one major enemy remaining. Erick’s reaction was fast enough for him to send a quick salvo at the enemy down below, before it could do anything worse than it had already done.

Erick’s mind caught up to his action a fraction of a second later, as he watched his spellwork impact a monster. For a moment, the thing in the center of the camp was a towering man, with the lower half of a spider and two sets of arms, with each hand filled with a different weapon; a sword, a mace, a shield, and a wand. It was an ugly fucker, with bony growths poking out of every hard edge of its body. All of that was bad enough, but the existence of a clearly-intelligent monster was an odd enough thing to see that Erick might have tried to talk to it, if it hadn’t already tried to attack him.

And it had a red tabard on, and it was in the middle of committing horrors, so the results of that talk were already a foregone conclusion. Plus, it was already attacking him, too. It had pointed that wand in its hand at Erick.

A stream of bright red fire lanced from that wand, threatening to take off Erick’s head, or slice him into halves.

Erick shot off another tap of his own weapon, from the hip.

As Erick dodged the fire, the abomination in the center of camp exploded into blackened gore.

Black gore rained down all around the decaying body of the monster humanoid, and Erick strained his actual senses, trying to hear or see if there were other people in the camp. He still had some mana sense, but that personal skill wasn’t that great down here, when his range was only 10 meters and the truly dangerous enemies had ways of making themselves invisible to his senses.

… Nothing else attacked him, though.

Erick took another step, and another, checking out the areas nearby. A quick walk around the walls of the camp was enough to show that he had killed everyone that needed killing.

“… I think that’s the last of them,” Erick said, daring the dungeon to throw a surprise monster at him.

… No surprise monster came forth.

So that was one camp mostly done! Wasn’t too bad.

There was only one fly in this ointment: Erick had felt, when he saw those soldiers cheering for the deaths of people inside the camp, where Erick could not see, that there were people down here, suffering, just out of sight. And he had been right.

Three bodies in blue tabards lay in the center of the camp. They were burned and bloody, and very dead. Erick suspected that they had been executed in a gladiatorial sort of way; set against the abomination for the pleasure of the Riam soldiers, though he had no real way to confirm or deny that happening right now; he would be [Witness]ing later, but he doubted he would get any temporally local answers in that [Witness]. At least these blue tabarded people had died fighting, unencumbered by manacles.

Two more people in blue tabards, with their arms and legs locked together in irons, sat in cages to the side of the courtyard.

Erick went and grabbed the keys hanging beside the cages and began freeing the blues. Aside from dirt and small wounds suffered from being captured, both of them looked healthy enough to make it to Architect Marii’s on their own—

As soon as the first of the blue tabards was free and outside the cage, the man suddenly stood straight, and stated, “Thank you for the rescue, sir. I am a healer. Where should I go?”

Before Erick could formulate a response to the pure oddity of the man’s sudden change in demeanor—

The woman did almost the exact same thing, clearly stating, “Thank you for the rescue, sir. I am a cook. Where should I go?”

“… Can you two make it to Architect Marii’s without me?”

The two of them saluted, bowed, and then began jogging out of the courtyard—

“Wait!” The two people paused, and Erick rapidly added, “Take what you want from this camp before you go back to Marii’s. Loot, treasure. Whatever. Use it to keep both of yourselves safe on the trip.”

The man and the woman instantly changed course. The man went to what was left of the abomination, and then he tracked down the wand that was hiding in the dirt under some blackened gore. The woman went to a chest beside a tent near a tower to retrieve a necklace and a dagger.

And that was all the blue tabards cared to take from the camp. The man and woman jogged to the entrance to the camp and threw open the doors.

Erick watched them go for a moment—

Camp Cleared!

Push back Riam’s abominable forces. 1/4

MP up! +1000 mana production per day!

Create a devastating spell to change the course of war. 1/1

MP up! +5000 mana production per day!

“… Okay then. That works.” Erick looked at his staff. “You worked out rather well… Still kinda a prototype, though.” The meter-ish long length of inscripted metal seemed to almost glow gold in the light of campfires and twilight sky. The gem in the hilt radiated prismatic light, seeming to swirl with an inner promise of more to come. “… I could do better, though. Larger magazine. Stronger against Force shields. Stronger overall? Maybe include some Tricking Magic to simply erase shields, but that would increase the cost per shot—”

Scout appeared from the shadows. “Sir. I have located the next camp.” She pointed off to the side. “That way. 25 minutes of Stepping. Shall we proceed?”

Erick looked at Scout. All of those words of hers were rather well put together, compared to how she had been earlier in the floor.

… Even compared to an hour ago, when Erick first started this hunting project.

Hmm.

“Leave me and come back in five minutes.”

Scout bowed and then vanished backward, into the air and shadow, her feet barely touching the ground as she hopped away fast as she normally moved.

Erick turned his attentions to the thin manasphere, to see if he could [Witness]—

- - - -

Ashes stood amidst the gore of a well-made hilltop camp.

He had cleared out the entire place by himself. All five towers, the inner keep, the ambushes waiting in the double-curtain wall. All of it, cleared by his hand, and the weapon he had been tinkering with for the last decade, but which only really evolved into what it was in the last five years. It was a great success.

Over 250 soldiers dead at his hand, in less than half an hour. The abominations took little more time than that, and only really required better positioning. Those newest monsters of Riam lay splattered across the stone ground of the camp, their multiple arms and legs and heads scattered everywhere, giving the impression that Ashes had killed well over 20 half-giants. But no, they were just abominations; people turned monstrous and in a controlled way, by Riam.

The abominations had been Riam’s response to Insten’s Resistance, and to all dissenters of Riam, but they had only really seen war in the last twenty years. They weren’t invincible, but they were battlefield juggernauts. And now they were last century's trash, for Ashes had created the solution to them, and to the common soldiery.

The solution to all of Insten’s problems.

Ashes flexed his grip on his staff and the giant mana crystal at the top brightened with his will to power, sending iridescent glows down the entire length of the staff, illuminating well-laid pleas to the good divines of the universe, or whoever might be listening out there. The entire weapon was as tall as he was, but the shadow it cast upon history would be a lot larger. With this, they would throw off the enemy and restore Insten to self-governance.

The pleas to the gods were probably a bit much, in Ashes’s opinion, but some gods liked that sort of thing. Sumtir, the god of war, was probably watching right now. Ashes had no idea if that guy was good for Insten or not, so Ashes hadn’t inscribed Sumtir’s specific prayers on the staff at all. Just general stuff, really. But deep stuff, too. Ashes had written down all his hopes for Insten onto this weapon, in the hopes that by killing with it, someone would notice, and help Insten throw off Riam.

Ashes had never been much of a religious man, for Insten had never truly had a patron god, but he had gained some appreciation for that stuff in recent years, and especially with the advent of Riam’s abominations.

For the abominations were some sort of evil god’s plan, for sure.

Ashes sighed into the stench of death and decay all around, muttering, “Gods, I hope Riam hasn’t actually fallen to the evil deities. That’d be a nightmare.”

Scout appeared out of the light and shadow, saying, “Sir.”

“Report, Scout.”

Scout nodded. “Since the prototype works, I must repeat the orders—” She corrected herself. “The suggestions of Command. Please return to the Mountain, and do not let the weapon fall into Riam’s hands.”

Ashes ignored that suggestion. “It’s a simple Bolter, Scout,” —a partial lie, but Ashes was fine with that sort of lie— “And it’ll break the second anyone else tries to use it. Built-in security.”

Scout withheld the rest of her words.

Ashes commanded, “Lead the way to the next base. We’re taking back the Plains.”

Scout saluted, and then pointed. “That way. 25 minutes of stepping. Shall we proceed?”

- - - -

Erick came back to himself.

Scout stood in front of him, awaiting orders.

Erick almost gave those orders, but he realized that instead of holding onto a cane, he was holding onto a gleaming silver staff. It was the one from the [Witness]; two meters tall, with a radiant, iridescent crystal nestled into a cage of silver at the top. Layers upon layers of writing adorned three-quarters of the length of the whole staff. Erick didn’t actually recognize most of that writing, which was kinda scary. The weapon still had a rifle-butt-like flange at the top, near the crystal, and a series of sights on the opposite side of that flange, but other than that...

Ah.

So.

Wizardry. Right.

Erick was pretty sure he had changed the staff into what it was. Somehow, someway, he had done that. With a twitch of intent, Erick had his Ring of [Identify] work its magic.

Staff of Divine Absolution, attuned greater artifact, 2500/2500

Trim the garden so that all may grow stronger in the absence of corruption. 75 mana per activation.

Erick nodded at those words.

And then he said to Scout, “Lead the way to the next camp.”

Scout saluted, then did as commanded.

Erick followed.

- - - -

Three hours later, Erick had killed three more camps, completed 11 more Rescue and Revenge quests in random patrols, and freed 12 more blue tabards along with 138 more normal people. He had completed the floor, and a portal had appeared at the completion of the fourth base, along with the words,

FLOOR TWO COMPLETE!

But Erick wasn’t done.

There was one place that Erick hadn’t visited yet, because nothing had pointed him that way. But now, he went that way on his own. He went to the Plains base.

The original base of the Resistance had been the size of a small city. It was now a wasteland that had been destroyed in artillery fire and quakes. Farmland burned in the night. Buildings toppled as mages prowled. Red-tabarded people excavated houses and stone fortresses, and killed whoever they found inside holes in the ground.

If this had been the real world, perhaps Erick would have arrived here, fresh off his execution of most of Riam’s forces in the field, to find these people holed up in whatever sorts of defenses they could erect out of the wreckage. They would have known that something was prowling in the dark and killing them all.

There was a bit of that, of course. One of the larger buildings, which looked like a slightly sloped cube with some towers on top, had red tabards draped down all four sides of the structure. That was the new base of Riam’s forces, and mages floated around that place, like guards watching the land around them.

But in all the rest of the Plains, the red tabards continued on their courses, slowly excavating the depths of the former Resistance base under spotlights from floating, bubbled mages, finding mana chambers and meta-resources, and capturing prisoners, if they felt like it. Mostly they just killed. They weren’t marshaling defenses against a rapidly approaching, unknown enemy. They were just working.

… Or maybe the Old Cosmology didn’t have [Telepathy], and grand organizational magics?

… No. They had to have had something equivalent to [Telepathy].

This was dungeon shenanigans keeping the enemy from organizing as a true army would organize.

Erick moved on. He estimated what he was seeing. Maybe a thousand people on the ground. A good 50 in the air, in bubbles and providing air support. Kinder had mentioned assassins at the beginning of the day, maybe 16 hours ago, so there were probably assassins hiding in the shadows, like him and Scout. And then there was the Artillery Archmage. Erick had not seen the Artillery Archmage at all… Probably. It was possible that Erick had utterly obliterated that caster in one of those previous camps out there, but… Maybe that mage was still alive, and here?

Somewhere in here.

Erick had technically already completed the floor. All of this here was extra. He suspected that a normal delver team would not assault this sort of location, because for a normal team to assault a place like this was to get killed. Erick was not a normal delver team, and his improved bolter was, quite frankly, completely overpowered for this world, or any world; even those worlds with Health.

Veird didn’t have bows or guns, because they had Bolts of all kinds, because it was easy to string together Bolt spell after Bolt spell to make something truly powerful, though mana costs ballooned a lot under the Script when one tried to do that sort of thing. Some people on Veird did go into ‘Bolt Magic’, but it was a rare sort of thing, because it took a lot to make Bolts into a truly damaging spell. But Erick had managed it.

Perhaps Ashes had managed it too, in the Old Cosmology.

… People shouldn’t have this much personal power, in his opinion. An auto-targeting explosion, decay, obliterating spell? Shouldn’t exist. But then again, perhaps the only reason Erick was holding onto this weapon right now was because he was a Wizard.

Wizards would always be an issue, in this world or any other. Which was fine. In those cases, it was up to people like Erick to ensure the safety of everyone else, and to ensure that no Wizard was able to ruin this world, or any other...

Erick sighed. He was delaying. He didn’t like killing, and so he was delaying.

He hurried up.

Erick lined his staff’s sights upon a mage in a bubble, hovering above the main base of Riamites. He didn’t have any zooming capability in his staff, but he didn’t need it, for he had plenty of ‘zoom’ on his [Eternal Benediction], inside his Belt of Many Functions. A flick of specific intent at his belt, and Erick’s eyes saw for kilometers, while his hands became as steady as the ground underfoot.

He lined up the shot.

He fired.

The staff made no noise at all. It didn’t even make any light; just a bare ripple of Force, and a spurt of black.

Half a kilometer away, a spreading shrapnel Bolt ripped right through the mage’s bubble and tore through their red-tabarded body, disintegrating the man’s upper half in a claw-like swipe of black gore.

Erick took aim at the next mage in the sky, and fired.

Half an hour and ten repositions later, Erick raised his Lightning Rod out of the caved-in head of the last assassin. At least twenty of the black-clad bastards had boiled out of the compound, aiming for Erick’s life. They had actually managed to find him in the dark, too. But Erick had ended them all. All the assassins had managed to do was distract Erick from the ‘real’ threat lurking in the Plains encampment.

The leader of Riam’s attack force was a forty-meter long centipede of an abomination, with tens of lower human torsos all strung together, forming the base of a centaur-like creature, while his ‘upper torso’ was made of seven torsos, each more gruesome and out of proportion than the last. Tens of arms held wands and staffs and shields of all kinds, while the creature’s main chest was a mouth large enough to swallow a man whole, with massive fangs to ensure no one escaped that stomach.

Rippling magics shielded the entire creature.

Erick took aim, and fired.

So far, the centaur had been the only creature who required multiple shots to kill. It took five shots.

Erick’s magic struck the centaur-pede’s back end and spread fast. Black veins crawled across the entire creature, and then the darkness detonated. Erick shot the creature a few more times to be sure. Immediately, arms and legs and bones and heads spilled out into the air in every direction, sent along their arcing paths by dark explosions. The monsterized leader of the Riamite forces fell apart, and did not rise again.

SPECIAL ACTION! PLAINS RECLAIMED!

MP up! +5000 mana production per day!

Erick sighed, relieved.

That was that.

And then Erick centered himself, and turned his gaze to the past...

- - - -

Ashes only had to get into melee three times during the assault, for Scout had taken care of most of the people trying to assassinate him in the night. As Ashes clipped his rod back on his belt, he wondered if his new weapon would make him soft. If this absolute destruction from afar would be bad for him, in the long run.

“… Probably not,” Ashes concluded.

Scout appeared in the wind, one knee on the ground. “Sir. It’s a complete rout. All stragglers are ended and buried in the ground which they sought to steal from us. Prisoners are being evacuated now. What are your orders?”

- - - -

Erick came back to himself, to see Scout kneeling before him. “Alert Marii and the soldiery. Cleanup the Plains. If you find anything good, then bring it back to Marii’s base and save it for me, otherwise I’m sure a lot of you would like to reclaim your homes. So let’s do that.” Erick added, “I’ll catch up soon enough.”

Scout rose to her feet, tears of joy falling as she saluted again. “Sir!”

And then she turned and took off, vanishing into the night.

Erick turned and took in the sight of the doorway leading to the next floor. The pathway beyond was white and glowing, spilling day into the night all around. That doorway had followed him for a while now, though it had closed when Erick actually assaulted the base.

Erick said, “I’m staying here for a while. I’m going to play around with mana crystals.”

The light in the hallway dimmed a fraction, as though the dungeon was contemplating something.

And then Kinder stepped out from behind the wall of empty air, to stand in the center of the gateway to floor three. He looked physically the same as he did when Erick left him behind at Marii’s —too skinny to be healthy— but he was wearing normal clothes now, and he had no visible injuries.

Erick was not surprised.

“Hello, Ashes Woodfield. You are making a mess of my dungeon.”

Erick grinned a little. “Hello, Kinder. Finally dropping the act, then?”

“We do what we must.” Kinder said, “I cannot allow you to live on this second floor for however long you wish. If I do, then the people start turning real. In a month, Scout and Marii and others would be so close to being real that it would be cruel to do anything other than bring them fully into reality. Which we would do, but it is not something we enjoy doing. Do you know that most people fail to progress past floor 2? Do you know how many copies of Marii we have already? Too many, and they all hate each other for ‘stealing’ each others’ inventions. It’s especially horrible when delvers make the Riamites real, for those people come along with so many destructive tendencies that we almost always end up executing them anyway.”

“Sounds like you have some issues with how your dungeon is set up.”

“We do not, actually, have any problems at all.” Kinder said, “If you were forced by circumstance to hole-up inside Marii’s and if you failed to progress, or if you had simply chosen to do your mana crystal experiments without killing the Riamite forces before all that, then I would have broken hiding protocol in ten days, and either spurred you on, or increased the difficulty so much you would have been forced to reset the entire floor and try again.” He added, “But you killed the Riamite forces, and you still want to stick around, and so, here we are.”

Erick nodded along. All of that sounded rather normal and good, and made Erick rapidly reevaluate his theory of Kinder’s origins, and everything else he thought he knew. “You’re not from Greensoil, are you, Kinder?”

“No. I am from the ‘Old Cosmology’, as you Veirdians call it. Some people would choose to be pedantic and say I am from Atunir’s memory of the Old Cosmology, but I don’t care for those people.” Kinder said, “You, Ashes Woodfield, are also partially from the Old Cosmology.”

“Possibly. I’m trying to figure that out.”

Kinder nodded. “I invite you directly to the sixth floor, where delver housing is free, and almost all basic needs are met, and so you can play around with mana crystals in a better setting. I ask you to accept this offer, so that you don’t take up so much of my dungeon’s resources, and so you don’t go around accidentally creating people.” He added, “We’ve had dragons here, too, but not a Benevolence Dragon yet. If you desire, I have [Renew]-based artifacts that will allow you to keep your core as full as you desire, without physical discomfort, but only if you accept my offer now.”

Erick raised an eyebrow. Then he said, “I’ll agree to that, on three conditions. First: Who are you, exactly?”

“One of the repro dungeon masters for the Glittering Depths. I was born a few years ago when the former master, who was a Kinder from this second floor, touched a dungeon master slime and made me. That Kinder soon went on to Candlepoint and got himself in the [Reincarnation] pool. I have no idea where he is now, or what he looks like. I am three years old by Veird sensibilities, but I have at least three decades of memories.”

Erick tried not to let his surprise show on his face, because he suddenly remembered Kinder. No wonder he thought the man was from Greensoil! Because the original man was from Greensoil. Or at least that’s what his application had said. Ah. Shit. Well. Erick’s Intelligence was failing him, obviously. The [Blessed Memory] in his Belt of Many functions was doing work, but it lagged behind the Script’s Intelligence.

Erick moved on. “The second condition is that you tell me why you’re doing this; why you’re trying to get me to move on faster.” Erick said, “The real reason.”

“… That is complicated, and I will not tell you anything in that direction until I can trust you.” He put his hand over his chest, and pledged, “On my honor and under the eyes of the Dark, and Atunir, I mean you no harm with this deal. The majority of my wish in offering this deal is to get you out of the second floor, so that you do not make any more people here real, and to help you accomplish whatever it is you want to accomplish, while mitigating all the disaster that a dragon like yourself can cause inside these Glittering Depths.”

Shadows moved underfoot, and all around.

Neither Kinder nor Erick acknowledged them more than a simple glance to the ground.

“That works for me.” Erick nodded, then said, “One last thing: Where was the Artillery Archmage on this floor?”

“You killed him already. He was at the fourth camp.” With pointed sarcasm, Kinder said, “People aren’t usually capable of turning a bolter into some sort of grand artillery spell.”

Erick smirked at that.

“Yeah yeah. Keep smirking.” Kinder said, “If your purpose in coming in here was to be incognito, you failed that miserably. You’re at the top of the Decoration board, now. 4200 Decoration! Clarice is only at 3450, and she’s been there for a year. So congratulations on that.”

“Your words are appreciated.”

Kinder sighed. “Will you accept my proposal? Will you come to the sixth floor directly, and leave my poor dungeon alone?”

“Can I come back to these other floors later?”

“As long as you promise not to spend any more than a day or two on any floor except the sixth. The sixth floor is the City Restored, and all the people there have become fully cognizant, so there’s no danger of people staying too long down there.”

Erick’s eyes went wide. “You have a False Society here?!”

And if Erick was understanding the man correctly, it was a False Society that wasn’t really ‘false’ anymore.

“We’d prefer not to use that term, since we’re as real of a society as any other.” Kinder smirked this time. “But, yes. The City Restored is a bit of the Old Cosmology, restored to life and prospering the way Atunir intended, and kept as secret as we can. I’ll give you a small tour when we get there, if only to ensure that you won’t bring the problems of Veird and Greensoil down into our little Utopia.” He lost his smirk. “If you prove problematic, then you will be exiled from the dungeon, Ashes Woodfield.”

“… Sure. I can agree to that.” Erick gestured forward. “Lead the way.”

Kinder led the way down into the white tunnel.

Erick followed, tracking dirt and black blood onto white stone.

He didn’t know that there was a False Society down here. He did know there had been a place for delvers to congregate and live, but an actual False Society was a big deal. That was what Quilatalap was charged with creating in Storm’s Edge, and the Freelands had a False Society in their Grand Dungeon, too. There were no real laws against them, but False Societies could very easily be abused and controlled by the people who created them, like what had happened in the Freelands.

Gods, that had been a mess and a half.

The door to the second floor closed behind Erick, and far down the hallway, the white walls opened up into another portal. The sun shone in that space beyond that opening…

Erick asked, “Is it Iben restored? The City Restored, I mean. Not any part of Riam, I hope.”

Kinder paused, then looked at Erick. And then he relaxed. “Ah.” He turned and faced forward, and kept walking down the hall. “You know the true name of our Utopia. Either you overheard it from someone who should not have shared that name, you spied rather well, or you have truly had some [Witness]-able experiences. I am even more sure that it’s the third option.”

“I have seen some memories of the goddess, yes,” Erick admitted, as he followed at Kinder’s side.

“… And you say it so easily, too. And your staff is the wrong shape...” Kinder sighed. “You dragons always screw up my dungeon. Always getting into places you shouldn’t go and triggering things you shouldn’t trigger. It’s that mana you keep in your core, you know? You let it out into this space, and it touched off chain reactions everywhere. If you had come into this dungeon without your core then you could have proceeded normally, and I wouldn’t have had to interrupt your journey of discovery of The Goddess.” He said to the air, “Apologies, Atunir.”

Erick got the conversation back on track. “So? Riamites?”

Kinder debated with himself exactly how he wanted to answer that question. “… There are very few Riamites still living in the City, and you will treat them as well as you would treat anyone else, or else you will be removed from Utopia.”

“… And they didn’t try to blow up the place?”

Kinder waved away that concern. “You will be also removed from Utopia if I find you interacting badly with the orcols, or dragonkin, or incani, or otherwise. Utopia is a home for everyone, no matter where they are from. This is a place of peace, and is as close to Atunir’s Heaven as we mortals can get. You will respect that.”

“… It’s not just a human dungeon?” Erick suddenly asked, “Greensoil cannot be happy about that.”

“We deal with them just as we deal with you; peacefully, and hopefully in only positive ways. But we will kick you out if we don’t like you, so please get along with everyone else, as best you can.”

Kinder was still nervous about being around Erick, which showed that he had known about Erick this whole time.

… Or at least he had known about ‘Ashes’ being a dragon. He probably didn’t know about ‘Ashes’ being Erick. If he did, this conversation would have gone a lot differently. The threats, even as light and as understandable as they were, would not have happened.

Erick had gone with the flow and ignored the small threats to keep the peace, and since he didn’t see any reason to stop doing that, he said, “Completely understandable. I don’t foresee myself doing anything untoward to anyone. I do foresee myself working with mana crystals, though.”

Kinder nodded. “We have more than enough space for you to have your own little nook of land, for all your mana crystal experimental needs. You’ll have to do that outside the city limits, though, for the safety of everyone else. One final thing: The name of the city is Utopia, if you didn’t already pick that up. Not ‘Iben’. Keep that name to yourself… Though there are places in the city that you can visit to speak freely with others there. I’m sure those experiences might be enlightening.”

Erick smiled a little as he nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

They reached the end of the hallway.

Kinder led the way through the portal, onto a white cliff, in the sunshine. Erick followed—

Right into dense, normal-levels of mana.

Kinder spoke of protocols and normal things, as he handed Erick back his Wand of [Drinking Food] and [Rejuvenation], as the two of them stood there on that cliff, at the top of a tower. But Erick mostly gazed upon the Restored City that spread out in all directions.

Utopia looked rather in-line with its namesake. White towers. White housing everywhere. Roads as yellow as gold, or as shining as silver. Rainbow roofs. Crystals hovering over some towers here and there, shimmering with magic. Greenery popping everywhere, in trees and garden beds. The mana density of the manasphere allowed Erick to mana sense all around him, from the crystal spire of the tower they stood upon, to the streets down below, where people walked in markets and talked of this and that, and children played in town squares by fountains or got harried off to class by diligent teachers. In the distance, beyond the houses, beyond where Erick expected to find a wall but where there was no wall to be found, fields of golden wheat grew like an ocean of gold. Here and there, rows of green orchards and vegetable gardens adorned the lands for tens of kilometers, looking almost like square islands upon a golden sea.

Golden words hung in the air in front of Erick.

Welcome to the sixth floor!

Welcome to the City Restored.

Please respect the utopia. No offensive spellcraft is allowed within city limits.

- - - -

- -

Ashes Woodfield (9 saves remaining)

Health: 1000/1000

MP per day: 22,500

Meta-Irons: 4200, 0 in storage

Meta-Diamonds: 10/10, 0 in storage

Rod of the Lightning Guardian, 1000/1000

Staff of Divine Absolution, 2500/2500

Breastplate of [Regenerating Health], 250/250

Bracelet of [Hidden Wind], 100/100

Bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation], 100/100

Necklace of [Meditation], 50/50

Ring of [Identify] 50/50

Belt of Many Functions, [Blessed Memory], [Eternal Benediction], [Benediction of the Unseen], 50/50, 50/50, 50/50

Unused Meta-Irons: Wand of [Drinking Food] ~/200, Wand of [Regeneration] ~/100

Unused Meta-Diamonds: [Murky], [Flaming Ooze]

- -