TS5: Chapter 4 (Patreon)

Knowing that she was talking about him, Thorn just grinned and rubbed the back of his head. He'd long since gotten over being bashful when his friends made fun of him for being overpowered. It hadn't been his choice to be born as a Titan, but since this was his lot in life, he thought it better to just accept it as it was.

Later that night, after the team had had dinner and gone their separate ways, he sat with Velin on their porch, looking out over the mountains that stretched into the distance and the valley below where the Cathedral of the World Tree stood tall. The gigantic tree had already begun to poke branches high above the top of the cathedral's ceiling, and according to what Velin said, its roots dug almost to the center of the world's core. Soon it would integrate with the world heart, and its growth would be complete.

"Do you have an aspect you're leaning toward?" Thorn asked.

Resting against his side, Velin shook her head.

"I don't. There are a lot of different options, and I think all of them are, to some extent or another, viable. Though, if I'm being honest, I'm sort of leaning toward new life."

Thorn noticed the faint blush on her cheeks in the light of the setting sun and realized what she was talking about. He was silent for a moment before speaking, his voice abnormally quiet.

"Do you think it’s possible?"

Slowly sitting up, Velin turned to face him, her expression growing serious.

"Yes, I do," she said. "However, as I've been growing in power, I've also been realizing something else. There's no chance of it working now."

"What do you mean?" Thorn asked. "Why wouldn't it work now?"

"Thorn, there has to be a reason your parents left as soon as you were born," Velin said, "and until we know that reason, we can't risk having a child of our own. The rules regarding Titans seem to be absolute, and the clearest rule is that only a single one is ever present at a time. Furthermore, if we were to try to have a baby now, I have a strong suspicion that I wouldn't survive. My body simply isn't up to the task of carrying that amount of power. If I keep growing, however, eventually it will be."

Sensing Thorn's slightly downcast emotions, Velin stood, wrapping her arms around his neck.

"The time will come," she said, "but until then, we have a lot more to learn, a lot more growing to do, and a lot of mysteries to uncover. All of which we're going to do together."

Putting his arm around her waist, Thorn stood, picking up Velin as he did so.

"I know," he said. "I know you're right. But part of me really can't wait."

With a delighted laugh, Velin began to transform, her skin turning green as her body grew until she nearly matched him for height.

"No reason we can't practice," she said, grabbing his chin with her hand and planting a tender kiss on his lips.

Thorn’s arm tightened around Velin and a moment later they were gone, leaving the silver moonlight to play across the World Tree’s shifting leaves. The next morning, Thorn was up early, stoking the Great Forge as he began to prepare for his day. The more powerful he got, the less sleep he needed, and he had a feeling that soon he would begin to forgo it all together. There was simply too much that he wanted to do and not nearly enough time to do it.

With Hati and Akira heading to the tower, and a trip to Urmag’Tal’s Puzzle coming soon, Thorn wanted to make sure that he was well prepared. Partly, that meant stocking up on Destiny Points by completing commissions through the [Shop of the Endless Worlds] in the Great Forge, but it also meant making sure that everyone’s gear was up to scratch as well. He had been using his staff with a magical halberd blade on the end for some time, but that was starting to show its shortcomings. Additionally, the spirit that he had infused into the staff was showing signs of waking, and Thorn was curious to see if he could hasten that process.

He'd looked through all of the different requests in the [Shop of the Endless Worlds] and had come up with a list of half a dozen tasks that he thought he would be able to complete in the time before Urmag’Tal’s Puzzle opened, but first he wanted to take another crack at the alloy recipe he had received from the Master of the Ruins. It was a mystery to him how the shop’s requests came to be, who they were for, and how the items were delivered once he had finished them, but it also didn't particularly bother him that he didn’t know, as his focus was entirely on forging the items being requested. Similarly, his ability to spend Destiny in order to get access to rare materials and hidden knowledge didn't bother him either.

He wasn't sure if it was because of his experiences in Nova Terra or not, but the game had prepared him for such a system, and it was a surprisingly easy jump to simply accept it as it was. Additionally, there was nothing about his experiences in the Endless Worlds that made him think such an arrangement was unusual. Had he still been on Earth, it would have been perplexing, but he had seen many more magical things since coming into the Endless Worlds, so, he found himself using it without hesitation or question.

As he was scrolling through the shop to find some of the metal he would need for his attempt to create the alloy, a thought struck him, and he paused before rapidly entering a few words in the search bar. Almost immediately what he was looking for popped up: the secret recipe of the metal alloy that he had learned in the Renith Ruins. The Master of the Ruins had given it to him directly, implanting the knowledge in his head, partly as a reward and partly as a hook to force him into facing off against the Master's enemies. But even though this was the Renith Empire’s most closely guarded secret, the [Shop of the Endless Worlds] had that same recipe for sale, in the form of a simple scroll. The number beside it, however, caused Thorn to let out a low whistle.

"Is that really a million destiny points?" he asked, unable to believe his eyes.

Floating next to him, Eve nodded.

"Yeah, it is. But if you think about it, you're talking about the distilled wisdom of an entire civilization. You realize how valuable this information is, right? It has the ability to completely change the fate of an entire world, maybe multiple. So this is actually pretty cheap. Even if every single person in the civilization contributed one destiny point to change their fate, you'd have a lot more than this. The Renith Empire, at its height, was close to a hundred million people, after all."

Scratching his chin, Thorn closed the search and scrolled through a few more pages of the shop, looking over the different items.

"You mean to tell me," he said, "that the items are priced according to how much they can impact someone's fate?”

“Not just one person's fate, but many people's fate. Anything worth one destiny point is going to have a low impact on a lot of people. Anything worth a lot of destiny points is going to have a high impact on a lot of people."

"I guess that makes sense,” Thorn replied. “But wait, wouldn't that mean that the spirit-forging technique that I got earlier is under-priced? Because if I make a bunch of spirit-forged items and they all awaken, won't that have a large impact on a lot of people?"

"It's more nuanced than that, or at least seems to be," Eve said. "The spirit-forging technique only really has an impact on one person's fate, yours. If you learn it, you then have a simple choice that you didn’t have previously. Are you going to create an item that has a spirit in it? If so, it's your fate that has changed and not someone else's. Sure, there might be knock-on effects, but the difference is that this alloy is going to change the entire trajectory of society once you release it."

"I'd be curious to know who calculates these things," Thorn said.

"Me too," Eve replied. "Me too."

After gathering the material that he needed, Thorn set it out next to the forge. Today, he would be mixing metals, attempting to recreate the alloy that was used for the large black gates that led to the Renith Ruins. The gate that existed on Verdant remained unchanged, and Thorn had stopped by a few times to run some tests. Not only was the metal unbelievably mana conductive, allowing it to maintain its enchantments indefinitely, but the mix of metal itself seemed to produce mana, ensuring that the enchantments would never run dry, even if the world around it was stripped bare. Furthermore, even with his incredible strength, he couldn't leave a mark on the metal at all. The more he examined the alloy, the more mysterious it became, and the more excited he became to recreate it.

The information that he had gotten in the ruin was the distilled experiences of the blacksmiths who originally created and produced this metal for the Renith Empire, and it was his practice before he began each attempt to review this information along with what he had learned from his previous attempts. This wasn't his first time trying to create the alloy, but every single one of his other attempts had failed, a novel experience in its own right. Thorn was used to being able to do everything he put his hand to, no matter what it was, and now, having run into a challenge that he could not immediately solve, he was finding himself becoming slightly obsessed.

"Let's review," he said, taking position in front of the crucible where he would do his work.

"The last attempt ended with failure," Eve said, speaking as if she was reading off of her notes. "Your measurements were not quite precise enough, and there were two deviations in both temperature and time that likely caused the instability. In order to fix them, you need to ensure that you don't allow the heat to exceed the set level, which means actively reducing the temperature as the metals begin to react. The problem was that as soon as mana was added to the mix, which you have to do in order to get the structure correct, the two metals you were mixing began to produce heat. That sent the internal temperature higher than the external temperature, throwing off your balance. Additionally, you waited too long to add the third metal."

Listening carefully as Eve walked him through the mistakes that he had made in his previous attempt, Thorn nodded.

"Got it. Maintain the proper heat. Don't wait so long for the third metal. How are our stores of the more common materials holding up?"

"As long as you have destiny points, you'll be fine," Eve said, "but the Tempest steel we got isn't quite as high quality as I'd like. We might need to refine it first."

"Let's do that," Thorn said. "We want to keep our chances of success as high as possible."

The Tempest steel was a curious metal with incredibly high mana conductivity and a natural attraction for electricity. Thorn thought that if such a metal had existed on Earth, power generation technology would have advanced by leaps and bounds. As it was, he had a piece about the size of a fist that had cost him two destiny points to acquire. Thankfully, he didn't need much of it, and using a thick bladed knife, he stripped a chunk from its edge. Holding it carefully in a pair of tongs, he heated it in the forge, waiting until the metal was glowing a bright cherry red before pulling it out and dropping it on the anvil.

Lifting his hammer, he brought it down with a hard smash, carefully controlling the vibrations to focus as much power into the piece of metal as possible, causing sparks to fly as Thorn drove the impurities out. Metal of this quality was typically exceptionally pure, but there were always slight traces of other metals or dirt mixed in. As he brought his hammer down once again, he could sense those impurities starting to burn away.

Thorn had an unusually tight connection with the metal that he worked simply because of his absolute affinity to Earth, and now that he had added an absolute fire affinity as well, he found that his control of heat had grown even more meticulous, strengthening his forging abilities once again. With his newfound connection to flame, he was able to sense even the slightest changes in temperature, and after three strikes, returned the metal back to the forge, heating it once again. Though he wasn't sure how he knew, his instinct told him that a fourth strike would have been counterproductive, folding more carbon into the metal and creating the opposite effect from the one he was trying to achieve.

It only took a few seconds for the metal to heat back up to the correct temperature, and again he pulled it out, this time hitting it only once. Each time he put the metal into the forge to heat it and then withdrew it, his strikes would vary, sometimes hard, sometimes soft, sometimes rapid, sometimes ponderous and heavy, each blow designed to maximize the purifying effect. Little by little, the metal transformed and the thumb-sized chunk grew smaller as all of the impurities were cleansed away under the rhythmic pound of Thorn's hammer.

He also used this time to bring his own mind into focus, slowly discarding all of the thoughts and concerns that he carried in his day-to-day life, purging himself through the ringing of the hammer against the metal and bringing his spirit in line with what he was about to attempt. When his last stroke fell, there was a subtle difference in the sound that filtered into his ears, and he knew he was done. Instead of putting the chunk of metal he was working back into the forge, he moved it to the side, placing it on the stone table he had erected specifically for cooling metal down.

His mind was focused, his spirit sharp. And blowing out a long breath, he sat down, crossing his legs and resting his hands on his knees. His eyes, half-closed, gazed into the nothingness as he sent his mind deep into the memories he had received. Immediately, his surroundings began to change as Thorn fell into a trance-like state.