Chapter 66 Investigation (Patreon)

            Alric was a third-tier mage with folding space, healing, and oracle cores. He was currently experimenting with his familiar, a dragon that was only three feet long, and seeing how many cores and spells he could put in it since he had long been able to expand its insides with folding space. So far, he was only able to give his familiar six of the tier two cores, albeit that was with eighty-two spells. That said, his familiar was far stronger than any warrior, as there was no way to cram so many spells into a warrior without killing them dozens of times over.

            As he was working, a fold in space opened up next to him, and an immortal told him, “The Great Black Tree Dungeon has managed to kill a group of mages. Investigate how.”

            Alric was surprised and asked, “Isn't that dungeon only a few centuries old?”

            “Yes, but it is combining magical and material methods in clever and useful ways. I do not have time to investigate their deaths myself, as I do not think there will be any discoveries that will help more of our people gain immortality, but perhaps you will find a way to make lightning warriors.”

            “Really, you are entrusting this to me?”

            “You are a third-tier mage with lots of experience working on your familiar, and you are as versed in our eugenics project as any other third-tier mage. Other mages have been growing the new metal found at the Great Black Tree Labyrinth, but we haven’t found a good use for it yet. Perhaps you will. I suspect I am giving you decades worth of work to make the new lightning warrior work, and centuries worth of work to make them efficient enough for wide-scale use. Furthermore, thanks to the lightning deer that walk on air being spread about the moons, we may end up with more lightning cores than any other tier two core in centuries to come, we might as well find a purpose for them.”

            Alric nodded. The Great Black Tree Labyrinth produced a rather docile tier two creature with the lightning deer, which was incredibly rare. So far, the only other tier two dungeon to produce a docile creature was the time dungeon, and that only produced very fast birds that ran away from everything.

            After a moment, Alric said, “I will investigate and do my best to make something practical from what I find.”

            “Good.” And with that, the folded space disappeared.

            Alric couldn’t leave right away; instead, he had to finish his work on his familiar, which was somewhat delicate as he had to make sure that the expanded space inside his familiar stayed inside his familiar. Exploding familiars were not uncommon once a mage had their folding space core.

            It took nearly two hours for Alric to finish, but once he was done, he took out a map, found where the Great Black Tree Labyrinth was, and began using his folding space ability to scout out the area. He had never been near the Great Black Tree Labyrinth, but with his folding space ability, any area was just one step away, albeit the further away something was, the more power it took to take that step. Since mages with folding space abilities were literally linking two separate spaces, they could also see the space they were folding, which meant that as long as the two spaces were folded together, they could see where they were going, and their folding space skill meant that they could move the end point.

            Once he spotted the Great Black Tree Labyrinth, he positioned the folded space just outside of range of the dungeon's area of influence and stepped through. Once through, he used his oracle core to begin looking for the area where the mages battled the essence creatures, and once he found it he once again folded space and stepped through. Once there, the dungeon creatures began to attack, or attempted to do so. Alric simply put a force bubble around himself, then used folding space to capture all the essence creatures in a bottle, if only because he didn’t know which creatures were valuable or not yet.

            The bottle he used was made of an incredibly durable magical metal that was called orichalcum… at least it was incredibly durable as long as it had essence, not mana, running through it. The metal had to be skinned off of living essence creatures, and then a dungeon core had to be fixed to it to give it an unending stream of essence, otherwise it would dissolve. Only tier three mages were given the incredibly valuable bottle, as it was used to collect living essence or mana creatures. Tier three mages were able to fold space so that the bottles had several cubic miles of space inside. That said, the strength of the bottle was the same no matter how much or little space was inside of it, and the essence creatures they put inside were generally much stronger than warriors, so they needed a bottle that could survive an attack an essence creature could make. Orinchalcum was the only material that was strong enough for most essence creatures.

            Once the essence creatures were safely inside his bottle, he began using his oracle spells to see what happened. He was able to use it to rewind time and watch the battle, and as he saw how the mages died, he muttered under his breath, “Why did you get lazy? If you had just kept powering your slurry spell, you would have been fine. Stupid.”

            Although he was irritated that the mages died uselessly, he was glad to know about the creatures that killed them, as he really wanted them in his bottle. Alric did not have to wait long as the void dolphins sped toward the tier three mage at a hundred and eighty miles an hour. When they entered the biome housing Alric, he simply used his folding space magic to put them in the bottle before they could fire one of their projectiles.

            With his task complete, Alric folded space, took one three-thousand-mile-long step, and entered his office. He would have been surprised to know that the dungeon was very happy with his visit.

            Once he was back he prepared a table to hold one of the void dolphins. When it was complete, he folded space and forced one of the captured dolphins onto the table and into the manacles. The void dolphins' first reaction was to fire off its coil gun, but Alric was prepared for it, as he had seen the devastating power of the weapon with his oracle spell. He used his folding space spell to cover the void dolphins' firing hole, and as the void dolphin shot its six-ounce iron ammo, it ended up going straight up into space at two miles a second. Moments later, he fired again, then again, then again, until it was out, each bullet disappearing into the depths of space.

            Alric looked at the creature in fascination and said, “What a clever little creature you are. You have a spell that allows you to send lightning anywhere you want, which gives you unprecedented maneuverability, and another spell that lets you launch iron at higher speeds than any other essence creature on any of the moons. If I am able to give our warriors the same abilities as you, then they might be useful even in the third-tier dungeons.” Alric was completely uninterested in the void dolphins' radar ability as humans tended to have a bad reaction to changing out sensory organs. Alric wasn’t sure what sensory ability the void dolphins had, but since they didn’t have eyes or ears he knew it would be something esoteric, so he didn’t investigate that part at all.

            With that Alric began on a centuries-long project to transfer the void dolphins' abilities to human warriors.  


Authors note- Next week I will explain why the dungeon is happy about Alric's visit. It wont be in the first paragraph, but it should be in the first five if not the first three.