Wish upon the Stars chapter 1143 (Patreon)

I was back. It felt good to be me again. Ever since I had created my Domain, I had felt sort of adrift where it concerned my powers. The demons did all the work, and I just kind of…went along. My favorite part of being an Ascendant had always been innovation. Accepting that my Domain had reached its final form had honestly been a bit underwhelming, and while I’d done my best to learn to work with my incarnation abilities, it wasn’t until Fade mentioned it that I realized how much I missed making new demons.

Naturally, in order to actually DO such a thing, I would need to adjust my designs for the timepieces, and there was no one I was more certain could help me than Professor Hawkins.

Still, I had come to Common City for a reason, and I really did need to put the Overlay ability through its paces, so I spent the rest of the day working on my combat skills and stress testing Owen’s new capabilities before heading back. The next morning I woke up bright and early, and after stocking my new scrolls, headed for my teacher’s house with plenty of questions.

When I arrived, I rapped on the door harshly, waiting for Professor Hawkins to respond. And waiting. And waiting. Finally, I rolled my eyes and checked under the mat for the key, letting myself inside.

Despite ostensibly having two students (Sorwen had taken my advice and signed up for this class, but we’d decided to divide our time so we could each get private tutelage), Professor Hawkins was more interested in his research than teaching. That was the reason for his ramshackle house and boring class name. I’d been told the only reason he even offered a single credit for his class was because he had to offer SOMETHING, or charge for it instead. Apparently he had originally tried to make the class as expensive as possible to scare people off, but everyone had assumed it was some kind of secret elite course and he’d been flooded with students.

Eventually, after some trial and error, he’d figured out the best way to make the course effectively invisible was to give it a boring name and offer the lowest possible reward to make it seem like a pointless intro course.

That being said, because of his categorical lack of interest in teaching (despite Elonwy’s protestations that he was secretly great at it), Professor Hawkins tended to forget he even HAD students, and would often get lost in research. Because he was so distracted, he rarely answered his door, and would sometimes forget to eat or sleep for long periods of time. Admittedly, as a god, he didn’t actually NEED to do those things, but most deities still did from what I was told, because food and sleep are pleasant experiences and can help keep them grounded.

“Hey, Prof!” I called as I let myself in. “You here? I have an interesting research topic to consult you about?”

There was no response, and I rolled my eyes, heading through the dining room. As I stepped inside, I was brought up short as I ran headfirst into a tall, intimidating man in armor wearing an intricate mask. It was so jarring it took me a split second to figure out what I was looking at. “Huh,” I said to myself. “That’s weird.”

The other me groaned. “Not really. I knew this was going to happen. I remember it from your side. The Professor is doing something weird to the local temporal field. I just came from meeting with him, he’s through that door over there. You’ll run into yourself on the way out and have this exact conversation.”

“Well, that seems safe,” I said dryly. “I’m sure there will be no horrible consequences to crossing my own timestream.”

A voice echoed from the next room over. “Don’t be dramatic,” called the Professor. “It’s a minor paradox. If you have something to talk about get in here. Don’t mind the echo, it’s from a potential future that I haven’t experienced yet.”

Future me shrugged, then gave a wave as he walked past me and out the door I’d just come through. I followed the Professor’s voice out into the living room where he was sitting at his desk, working on some kind of weird metallic crystal device that was crackling with some kind of sparkly electricity. “What do you want?” he asked without looking up. “I’m busy.”

I watched him warily as he worked on the device, noting the strange stuttering of his hands in the air as they blinked and warped. Rather than move smoothly through the space, they would jutter and vanish, only to appear in another spot. It wasn’t speed, because he was moving pretty slowly, just a distortion of the space or time around the object. Honestly, it kind of hurt my head just looking at it.

“I wanted to talk to you about a project,” I hedged. “I finished my first timepiece, and-”

“You failed?” he said dryly. “I’m assuming you got the attribute ratios wrong and your Domain automatically refined the design to make it functional.”

I grimaced. That had been what happened. Dantalion had confirmed it, I had used too much time attribute and not enough information. I’d done the tolerance math about fifty times, so it was frustrating that I hadn’t been able to balance the construction, but Dantalion assured me that the changes would make it easier to adjust the formulas during my next construction effort.

He rolled his eyes. “I TOLD you not to adhere too strictly to the initial design. Stat blocks are inherently more stable than Mythcrafted construct elements. There’s a higher fault tolerance when crafting with stats.”

“I didn’t do that,” I snapped. “I spent weeks refining my approach. And it was close. There were only a few minor alterations. The next one will be better.”

“Maybe,” he snorted. “Except the complexity of the other two projects is exponentially higher. The Overlay project was your training wheel design. We’ll see if you learned enough to offset the steep jump in difficulty. Now, I’m assuming you didn’t come here to beg me to do your homework for you, so what exactly is this project you want help with?”

So I told him. I described the process of making forms and pseudo Domains, which was itself an application of Mythcrafting, and what I was hoping to accomplish. He listened carefully, face betraying nothing, and then eventually nodded. “It’s…intriguing. There’s no real reason you shouldn’t be able to anchor the mechanisms together, but making them recombinant is going to be tricky.

“I have to admit, your Domain opens up certain avenues of exploration that would be difficult to pursue otherwise,” he said, setting down the tools he was using. He tapped the surface of the device in front of him and it snapped shut into a perfect sphere, completely devoid of energy as it thunked to the desk.

Turning to regard me directly, he searched my face. “I would be interested to see what you might be capable of creating. And to that end, I would be willing to take a more active role in your construction efforts. Understand that I normally would never interfere in the learning process, but I’m willing to make an exception for two reasons. One, you’ve brought me a research project worth pursuing, even for someone like myself, and two, your information demon allows you to study and retain action in a way a normal student cannot.”

My eyes widened. “So you’re going to help me design my next two timepieces?”

He nodded slowly. “I will,” he said after a moment’s pause. “But I will not design them for you. You will be doing the bulk of the labor and invention, I will simply be correcting mistakes as you make them. It will be frustrating and demoralizing. You will most likely wish to quit before we’ve gotten very far into the project. Should you do so, you will be removed from my class, and potentially from this major. I do not accept student assistants lightly, nor do I allow anything less than perfection from those I so honor.”

Translation, screw and you’re gone. It almost sounded like he was trying to get rid of me, but I knew better than that. If he wanted me gone he could have bounced me at any time. I hadn’t paid credits for this course, only received them, which changed the calculus a lot in how easy I was to eject. That was another reason he structured the class this way.

No, he wasn’t trying to get rid of me, he was expressing his faith in me. If he didn’t think I could hack it he wouldn’t have allowed me to work with him at all. Swallowing hard, I gave a long, slow nod. “I understand. I’d like your help, Professor. I promise to commit myself entirely to the project.” I paused slightly. “Do you think it would be possible to finish the designs, at least preliminarily, before midterms?”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “If you’re really prepared to focus entirely on the work, I do. This will be a gruelling process, but you will learn much. Of course, these designs will be basic timepieces. Teaching you how to anchor them together temporarily won’t raise their quality. Iteration and experimentation will still be needed to improve them.”

I knew what he meant. The complexity of a timepiece was dependent on the number of movements. Overlay, for instance, had twelve movements. I wasn’t certain if there was a hard limit to the number of movements, but I suspected the optimal state of each demon was probably about seventy two movements. My Domain tended to respond well to that number, or it had in the past.

This essentially meant that Overlay was operating at sixteen plus percent of it’s optimal efficiency, at least as it could be measured by this particular method of construction. Being able to identify that fact was one of the major benefits of the Professor’s style of Mythcrafting, even if it was a bit demoralizing to learn that I was quite that inept working with my natural talent.

Which meant that even once I perfected my first Archdemon, I would have plenty of room to improve that design and the designs of any others I managed in the future.

“I understand,” I told him, bowing formally at the waist. “I’m ready to begin learning. However long it takes, however much effort I need to put in, I’m not afraid. Pain and hard work are things I’m very familiar with.”

He rolled his eyes. “You think I don’t know that, boy? If I wasn’t aware of your work ethic I wouldn’t have made the offer to begin with. Just don’t quit on me and disprove my high opinion.”

Nodding to him, I straightened, waiting to see what he’d do next. He reached down to open a drawer and scooped the sphere into it before slamming it shut carelessly. “Now, in order to proceed, we need information. Summon your information demon, as well as the demon who represents our next project.” He paused for a moment. “Actually, I believe this will require a more personal touch. Call forth your Domain, I shall inspect it myself.”

I swallowed hard. I knew I could let more powerful beings into my Domain, but it wasn’t something I did often. The Professor was just a fragment of a god, to be fair, but he was still a deity. Still, if he wanted to hurt me he could have done it effortlessly. Taking a long, deep breath, I reached for Gehenna, projecting it into the world around us as I pulled the professor into the throne room. From there, it was time to get to work. I only had a bit less than a month to finish crafting the design for my Archdemon. From there…well, I would just have to hope it would be enough for the midterms.