Last Words chapter 64 (Patreon)

“Sometimes your powers scare me,” Ron said bluntly as he stared down at the scale model of the underground city. The footage we had didn’t get it done, so we had to send the drones back out. And then they got destroyed. So we had to send more drones. The model itself hadn’t actually been that expensive, but between it and the drones, I’d spent about fifty thousand of my remaining nearly sixty thousand dollar reserves, leaving me at nine thousand two hundred.

I snorted. “I’m not sure how scary making scale models of underground caves is. At least not in our line of work. I bet I’d be a pretty effective tunnel digger though." I paused. “I wonder if I could sell dirt right out of the walls to expand the tunnel down there?”

He shook his head. “Not without proper bracing. Digging tunnels is harder than it looks. I bet you’d be hell on wheels moving the dirt, but we’d still need an expert shoring up the structure so you didn’t drop the whole thing on our heads. Somehow I doubt your Barkskin enchantment would do much good against a few tons of rock and stone.”

I winced at that thought. He wasn’t wrong, and that was part of why I hadn’t done it. I had considered just buying braces as I went, selling dirt and then reinforcing immediately, but honestly I didn’t NEED another tunnel. What I needed was more information about the one we had, hence the expensive model. And hence bringing over a friend to help out with this little recon scheme. 

Speaking of whom, I glanced over at her, wondering how she was doing on the task I’d proposed. We still weren’t sure if it would work, so we were basically in a state of hurry up and wait while she explored it.

Connie, meanwhile, was studying a book she’d had her brother bring her, leafing through it for information on pendulum scrying. “Well?” I asked worriedly. “Do you think it’ll work?”

“You picked a good one,” she admitted. “I’ve been reading through this divination book for a while, and I’ve found reasons for all of the other ones to fail. Except dowsing. I think I might be able to learn dowsing, but there’s not much use for finding bodies of water here. But scrying works, at least it looks like it will. The problem is that while I CAN do it, the skill started at level one, and the area it narrows it down to at that level is something like ten miles. Well, that’s the FIRST problem.”

“What’s the second?” I asked curiously. 

She grimaced. “The second problem is that apparently it uses MANA. I didn’t realize that was possible, crossing systems like that. I’m guessing it would normally have required something like life force, and it’s using mana because I have it. Which is good to know but opens up a lot of very interesting questions.”

I blinked at her. “It…really does. What are the limits of that? Can I learn  how to make magical contracts? But I already do that, I guess. So why doesn’t it use mana? And does that mean you couldn’t have learned scrying WITHOUT mana? Like is the mana body skill a prerequisite? Were there mages on earth before? Can-”

“Please for the love of God, stop,” Ron begged, rubbing his temples. “This is making my head hurt, and it’s not relevant right now. I get that this is exciting new information for you, but we need to focus on our current problem. Which means we need that skill to go up. So, Connie, how much mana does that use?”

She hummed with interest. “I mean…not much. Maybe a tenth of one mana? At least at this level. But I’m pretty sure it’ll go up once I get my first perk. That’s just a guess though, I’m not sure how any of this works.”

Despite her words, her tone was eager and excited. I could tell she was as fascinated by the idea of magic native to our home world as I was. I’d known that speakers could access different abilities from different magic systems (obviously), but the idea of us being able to use OUR magic was…I didn’t even know how to process that. 

Of course, most people wouldn’t get the difference, any more than they’d get why using mana abilities felt so much more impressive to me than my objectively stronger speaker powers.

“I can supply you with mana fruits,” I stated bluntly. “They can be used to refill your mana, though most consider it a waste. I think we should try using purple fruits though, because it’s a lot cheaper and honestly using an indigo would be a bit of a waste considering how low your mana capacity is. What is it at, anyway?”

“One point four,” she said sheepishly. “I’ve been using the purple ones even after breaking through. They don’t do as much, but they’re better than nothing.”

I nodded. “Alright, we’ll need to get in touch with your brother. I need to make a few sales to him, I’m running dangerously low on cash. Does he have enough money to keep buying off me?” I was a bit worried I might drive Alistair into bankruptcy.

“At the moment, yes,” she said with a wince. “But this project is taking a LOT out of our accounts. The building materials alone have been a LOT.  I’m sure you’re aware. Not to mention we’ve still got active operations ongoing back home. The Red Feather knights are a big organization. This isn’t all of us.”

“I know,” I assured her. “And I appreciate it. I’ve got some irons in the fire for alternative revenue streams, but I think I need to take a trip back home soon and look for further business opportunities.” I wasn’t against the idea of selling the mushrooms to some of the other speakers if they were interested, without the fruits there were much less useful, but the recovery and healing aspects would definitely interest some of them.

Beyond that, I needed some backup of the speaker variety. I’d been planning to get in touch with Riley to bring him out here for a while now, and this seemed like a good time. I suspected his word would have a LOT of overlap with body tempering like the mana fruits could do, and he might get some really interesting results from the mushrooms too.

Originally, Calisthenics had seemed a little silly as a word, but I was beginning to see that almost any word could be powerful. Speakers obviously had some very interesting tricks I hadn’t considered or looked into yet. I couldn’t wait to see if Riley could apply Connie’s new discovery. I knew of a few folklore applications of energy that could be considered Calisthenics if you looked at them the right way.

But Riley was my best friend. I refused to put him in danger by bringing him into the middle of this lich nonsense. I needed to find that fragment and get rid of it before bringing him over, at the very least.

Connie held out a hand, taking the walkie from me and calling her brother about the sale. He responded in short order. We agreed that he would purchase twelve fruits at the previous twenty five thousand dollar price point, two for Connie and ten for his people. Three hundred thousand would be enough to last me quite a while.

This time, rather than try to buy them on the spot, I decided to flex my powers a bit. I could buy things over the phone and get paid through the bank, so could I buy them long distance? I focused on Alistair himself, then purchased those ten fruits, picturing him on the other side of the walkie talkie before focusing on selling them to him. “Oh my,” he said in surprise over the channel. “That was interesting. And very convenient. Did that affect your balance?”

“It did,” I confirmed as I checked my stats. I’d dropped two fruits on the table in front of Connie, who looked at them warily, which I understood given the taste of the unripe ones. “We’ll be in touch once we have more info. Meanwhile I need you to do me a favor. I know we can’t expand the tunnel because of the risk of collapse, but sneaking you all in here is out of the question too. I want to find a spot outside the city and create a shaft to the surface. With an existing tunnel I figure we can brace it and then remove the dirt straight up without too much danger of collapse.”

“So we can access the tunnel from out of sight of the guard,” he agreed. “But can you do that? What are the limits on your sell skill? Do you need to own the substance or…”

I shrugged, though I quickly realized he didn’t see it. “I don’t know,” I elaborated aloud. “I don’t think so, but I think I need some kind of claim at least? In any case, I own the tunnel, so the dirt it's made of should be fair game either way.”

We’d need to be careful when we tunneled up, in case we hit some roots or something, because in order to be out of the way we’d probably need to find a clearing in the forest, but wherever we ended up doing it, we could just hammer some wood slats into the dirt to make a cheap and easy ladder and as long as the entrance was concealed my people would have free access to both the tunnel itself AND both ends of it. That meant I could bring people in and out of the city much more easily, and they could follow us into the necropolis without having to risk discovery.

After giving him a basic heading for the tunnel using a few landmarks (and a cheap, quick map I paid two hundred for that only covered the very basics of the area from my perspective), I let Alistair go and turned to regard Connie. “Ok, so, how does this work?”

I gestured to the scale model. She nodded, walking over to the table where I’d constructed it. “It’s not too complicated. Basically you swing the pendulum, and it homes in on the target. It circles around the area you want, but the lower the level the bigger the circle. I can give you a ten mile radius to work in for the moment. The higher the level, the tighter I can make the circle. We might need a closer map eventually, though.”

Nodding, I gestured to the model. “Alright then. I guess we should get started. We can scry a few different things to get you some practice with it and level the skill. The model might be a little too big anyway. I kind of went overboard on it with the drones, hence the outrageous cost. We scouted quite a wide area, and the place is BIG.”

“Sounds good,” she said energetically, looking at the model with shining eyes. “I have to admit, I’m pretty excited to be doing ACTUAL magic.”

“RIGHT?” I said loudly, throwing my hands in the air. “It’s like…speaker stuff is more like superpowers, it doesn’t scratch the same itch. It’s COOL, but it’s not MAGIC. Magic is all spooky and mysterious. Totally different vibe.”

Reaching up to her neck, Connie took off a necklace she was wearing with a black stone set into a clawed silver hand. She shot me a grin as she strode forward. “So, what do we check first?”

“Tough one,” I said uncertainly. “Oh, why don’t you try and find the thing that’s been roaring so we can avoid going anywhere near it. I’m not sure what that IS, but it sounds like something I want absolutely no part of.”

Spinning the chain around like a bolo, she beamed at me maniacally. “One monster radius, coming up.” And with that, we got to work.