[NR] A True Rod - Chapter 610

Now, while pondering the secrets of the past and the System’s purpose was heady stuff, Jason still needs to solve that one last step. How to suspend his own lines so as to replace the old with the new.

Jason studied not just the lines, but a number of papers that had been written about Space within NeoRealm. It was a pretty hefty topic and even then, what he could get ahold of was only the most surface layer information. After all, Space is directly connected to things like teleportation and the protection against it.

Though there was one magic item which attracted his attention. And thankfully, while in their own way powerful, immovable rods weren’t considered secrets on the same level of the great interdiction barriers that prevent people from just teleporting into the middle of a city. Now, while in theory the rod was an extension of a simple levitate spell, that wasn’t how it acted. Instead, you press a button and the rod becomes stuck in place relative to the planet.

That sounded a whole lot more like what he wanted. Except even a cheap one was way more gold than he could afford. You would think for such a minor effect it wouldn’t cost all that much. Jason certainly had, but no, it required a princely sum of money.

The major problem comes from two sides. It was a true rod and so required the proper crafter, which means minimum someone sixth break. The other side of it is the fact that an immovable rod is a set magical effect. Even the best crafters tend to just nudge their final creations in a direction because of all the variables.

Sure, you want a fire effect, you can’t really go wrong with leather from a flame centered beast. Now, if you want your sword to burst flames when an impact happens? That either required making a bunch of swords until you got lucky, or some very serious research and development. So, stable recipes that produce a very specific magical item are closely guarded secrets.

There are some basic ones out there. More because even without some large group burning money on it, countless people have been searching for a way to extend the distance a bow can shoot an arrow or the classic +1 sword. Not that there is a literal plus one sword, but people have mostly agreed that a sword with a minor guidance effect and a minor wounding effect replicates the concepts well enough. This isn’t even a player thing, though their naming convention tended to run roughshod over the more fractured local names.

Though probably the most important, was the fact those names came with standards. A bow enchanted with “distance” doubles the weapons range. Of course, unlike roleplaying games of the past, things aren’t quite as cut and dry, but that one judgment allowed names to have meaning. You can’t compare a bow of superb flight to a bow of the far arrow without using them. However, if the System marks one as a bow of distance and the other isn’t, you have your answer.

Sure, on top of that, all kinds of modifiers get thrown on. Of double distance, lesser distance, and more. It is just that the standardization of “distance” is also what the freely available patterns top out at and so anything lesser is seen as a failed enchantment.

But the damn immovable rod, despite being freely available, was stupid complex. Yes, it was a true rod and a caster implement, but hitting level 100 and getting a core didn’t magically make you a super crafter. In fact, from the design, the actual limitation is having a core, even if that little bit of information is hidden so only someone with a core would realize it.

Jason right now, could technically craft the damn thing. If it wasn’t for the fact that it required both techniques he’d never heard of and materials that he couldn’t get. Oh, and being able to cast a Mana-based spell, but the caster didn’t have to be him, so it wasn’t a complete block.

Except he didn’t want to make the rod, Jason wanted to understand how it turned a relatively common spell to levitate something up off the ground a short distance into an effect that anchored itself wherever it currently was. And that effect? Jason doubted even the people who originally figured out the pattern actually knew how it worked.

While not quite as bad as some stories tended to make it, magic seemed to cause an innate desire to horde knowledge. So, while people built on top of past successes, they did so while blind. Patterns, spells, and so much more got out and yet people packed the understanding of why they worked how they did.

All that in mind, Jason was going to cheat. He didn’t need to know why the rod turned a common force spell into a spatial effect. All Jason needed was to mimic the end effect. This would be much easier with an actual example to feel out, but the pattern would have to do.

And so Jason spent a significant amount of time figuring out that pattern. A task which hadn’t been done before because, by level 100, it seemed even players fell into the info hoarding mindset. Jason shakes his head as he gazes at his finished product, players always had the info hoarding nonsense. They’re just also more likely to explain things so others realize their greatness.

Either way, the true pattern was complete. Jason, with some help from Courtney when she stopped in a couple days ago, had managed to lay out the exact method of crafting an immovable rod. That included un-obfuscating every point at which a technique was called for and not described, standardizing the measurements, and even specifying a ton of alternate materials which may be needed. And boy, was there a lot of that. It really highlighted why the process was so error prone.