Chapter 225 - A Home to Claim

With his eyes and sphere of awareness roving over the tropical forest in front of him, Nate diligently stacked blocks of stone and planks of wood beside himself by cheating and using a Gravity Rune. The goal was to build a three-story house for Kiri, Frick and himself to live in for the next six months, storing the entire structure inside of a spatial pocket which he could then create a spatial anchor for, allowing entry in and out without his assistance. Of course, that was only the first step of their plan. They had six months within this Wild Realm to try and pass level ninety. Galle’s calendar had been a little different from Earths, but not by much and Nate estimated, based on the speed of the sun's movement as it crossed the sky, that meant they had around one-hundred-and-eighty days to accomplish their minimum levelling goal. In his usual penchant for over-achieving Nate wanted to go beyond the minimum, but that would depend on other factors. 

In terms of the countdown, he wasn’t that worried about keeping track of the time they had remaining. There was a sense within him that felt like an urge, or perhaps like someone pushing him from behind, that was demanding he return to Galle to fulfil his deal with Arikanvil. With his eyes closed, he could recognise The System’s Embodiment. Reciprocity was whispering to him of the debt he owed and he could tell it would grow in strength and volume the closer they got to the deadline. The agreement with Arikanvil might be on pause, but Reciprocity was not yet balanced and it was making its demands known, the threat of failure being loss of access to his Class Core. But again, he wasn’t worried. Six months should be enough time to achieve their goals. The priority remained gaining at least thirty levels, which brought his mind to the mechanisms by which they might level. 

The mana concentration in the air was enough to cause his skin to prickle just from exposure as it tried to burrow inside him. To some extent, it was succeeding and with it he could feel his Class Core converting that mana into processed mana using the Divine Energy from The System inherent in all Class Cores. However, that conversion process was still limited in terms of levelling from ambient mana alone and, after doing some quick math based on what he could sense of his Class Core, he thought it would take ten days for it to convert enough mana to processed mana to be ready to trigger a level. That was fine if he wanted to level his Secondary or Tertiary Class. If, however, he wanted to level his Primary Class, he would also need to expend some of his precious Divine Energy. A glance at his Status told him that he had eighty units of Divine Energy, as The System graded them, stored with a maximum capacity within his Class Core of one-hundred-and-sixty. It seemed like a lot. Especially since most of his Divine Bonuses on his Skills only cost a single point of Divine Energy to activate but he also didn’t know how much would be required per level in a Divine Class, or how much he would need to create a Divine material. 

Thankfully, he did have an easier path than most towards gaining more Divine Energy. With his Embodiment of Conceptual Artist, he could just learn more about Concepts, how they related to each other and interacted, or discover new ones. Each discovery should add more Divine Energy to his pool. On the other hand, he didn’t know how much Divine Energy each discovery would produce. It would be a balancing act, he decided. Maintaining enough Divine Energy to fight and defend himself if needed, while also levelling his Primary Class, developing his Skills and maybe creating some Divine materials. It hadn’t been lost on him that none of his Divine Skills had gained a level. It was just a new barrier to improvement, he decided. Here, in this Wild Realm, mana was no longer a limitation. He had so much he could make anything below Divine he wanted and would never have to worry about running out. With one barrier removed, another fell into place.

Of course, there was one other barrier. The Law of Reciprocity demanded that they not punch down, targeting mortals. Based on the fact that Nate had felt nothing while felling and collecting the Legendary-tier trees, that rule only applied to those with Class Cores, which meant that he and Kiri would need to be very careful about not being the first to strike. Through his farsight sphere of awareness, he was witnessing just such an exchange between Kiri and a camouflaged green snake. His sister was casually walking around it, trying to bait it into striking at her. He couldn’t see its level, but he was guessing Kiri was just erring on the side of caution. Ten seconds later, the snake had finally had enough, rearing up and spitting venom at Kiri. The moment the serpent attacked, Kiri dodged and then went on the attack. Nate was surprised to see the snake was actually faster than Kiri. It, however, was a long thin tube while Kiri was a many-armed monstrosity. Nate counted at least twelve arms in play. The fight lasted less than ten seconds before Kiri had speared the snake through its head with her Legendary dagger. A dagger that Nate was starting to think might not cut it in this Wild Realm. Just one more thing he needed to work on. That made him think over all their plans and the things he did need to work on.

The priority remained levelling. Since the ambient mana wouldn’t be enough on its own, they would need to hunt the beasts of the island and likely hit a few Dungeons. If possible, the plan was to let Kiri solo the Dungeons to get better rewards, but that would depend on the difficulty of the Dungeons they found. Between those two jobs, they should get enough processed mana to reach level ninety. But that was just the first part of the plan.

The second was Skill Development. They both had some Divine Skills now, two in Kiri’s case with Nate having three. Since Divine Energy had been enough to level two of his Skills, one of the first things they had wanted to try was using it on lower-tier Skills. He’d felt resistance the moment he had tried was to add Divine Energy to his new Rare and Epic Skills. It seemed that the Skill would need to be Mythic before he could force the evolution to Divine for his Skills. That was fine, but it did mean they had a lot of Skill Development to do. Fortunately, the ambient mana should make that easy for them both. As for his Mythic Skills, he could evolve those to Divine whenever he wanted using the Divine Energy he had. However, he intended to hold off until they had seen how much Divine Energy was needed to gain a level in their Primary Classes.

On the topic of his Skills, Nate had quite a few new ones. The three Skills from his Conceptual Spatial Artist Tertiary Class were a coherent whole with one purpose. Creating separate spatial zones that he could pack full of whatever he wanted. Perhaps in a few years they could be miniature worlds unto themselves. The main reason he’d focused on that was so that he could take his home and his art with him wherever he went while also removing his existing spatial storage from his body so he could physically enter it. 

His choice to swap his Secondary Class from something related to space to Conceptual Life Artist had a little more nuance to it. For a while now, he’d been considering the relationships between Concepts, Mana and Reality. He’d had ideas, based on what he’d seen his mentor Aisling do. Her Skill, Even Spells Grow, effectively applied a life- or nature-like aspect to something that wasn’t alive. Spells were just mana shaped in particular ways to represent Concepts. The Etruan University had even taught Nate how new Sigils were discovered by reverse engineering spells learned from Dungeon rewards. The idea of taking something that wasn’t alive, and making it behave as if it was, had given Nate a plethora of ideas about his art and where he could take it. More importantly, how he could fold his love of creating art into his Classes and Skills. He just needed to find… or possibly force… the right synergies that would let him merge Runecrafting with Life and his art. It might take him months, or even years, but that was his goal. A cohesive whole that merged everything he was into one grand idea.

Nate smiled at his plan, satisfied that he was taking the steps now that would see him accomplish his goal. In the near-term, however, that would involve creating new equipment and altering both he and Kiri using his new Life Manipulation, Permanent Alterations and Improved Alterations Skills. Raising their skeletal structures to Divine would be just the first step. By the time he was done, more than just their skeletons and Class Cores would be Divine. 

While that covered the plans for their bodies, a topic he would need to get Kiri to agree to first, there was also the tools they wielded. Nate had a couple of Mythic items to his name, along with the Fossilised Solar Dragon Egg which was Divine; but he had lost multiple tools in the Battle of the Mythics. Since then, his focus had been on creating the portal to bring them to this Wild Realm, and setting up the Artist’s Emporium. His spare time and mana had gone towards making a large quantity of Epic-tier materials with various affinities. Basically, he’d gone for quantity over quality. Now that they had time and resources to work with, he would need to create armour, weapons, wards, wands, and who knew what else. Basically, he was going to be putting his nose to the grindstone as he outfitted them. 

If he had time he also intended to have a go at creating some fashionable clothes, with Kiri’s help, of course. His thinking was mostly that in the Heartlands, the state of the Lesser Divines was likely as politically hostile as it was physically hostile. To fit in, he and Kiri would need to not just look like they belonged, but more importantly, that they were wealthy and powerful enough to have a wardrobe of both powerful and fashionable equipment and clothes.

Fashion, however, was the last item on Nate’s list, because there was one more idea he had. One more thing he hoped to accomplish. If Frick so desired, Nate wanted to create a truly physical body for him. Between Kiri’s ability to enter the Spiritual Realm, Nate’s tether to Frick in the form of the Familiar Contract, and now Nate’s ability to manipulate life, he was convinced he had everything he needed to make Frick a real body and let him truly exist in the Physical Realm. The only roadblock was the Class Core. It was clearly possible for Spiritual beings to possess them, but Nate wasn’t sure how that would translate to the Physical Realm. It would also mean that Frick might lose access to Nate’s Skills, though, if that was what his Familiar wished, he would grant it to him regardless of the loss. The only reason he had any hope such a venture might succeed was because of the messages from The System. It had said it would offer assistance. It had, however, left the form of that assistance open-ended. Frick had been with Nate for over two years, and while they’d had a rocky start, and ignoring Frick’s penchant for playing pranks, the little blue goblin had been indispensable for most of that time. In Nate’s mind, that meant he at least deserved the option of being returned to a real physical being. Of course, it certainly helped that such an undertaking would not only level Nate’s Life Skills, but also develop them in the direction he wanted to take them. 

Standing up and brushing the white sand off his silk robes, Nate looked over the pile of building materials. He judged there to be enough to get started. Of course, Nate had no idea how to build an actual house. He knew you were supposed to brace various parts and buttress others or something like that. Without a manual, or a builder to advise him, Nate was going to cheat. The materials were already Legendary after all. A few Reinforcement and Durability runes, coupled with some Empower Sigils and the ability to physically join the materials together using Multi Conceptual Material Shaping meant that whatever he did, the final product would, at the very least, be sturdy and stable, if not architecturally sound. Then again, he was hiding the building in a spatial pocket he controlled, so as long as he didn’t let any lunatics in it, the building itself shouldn’t come under attack.

With that in mind, he intended to use the stone blocks as the base, scaffold and some of the facing for the intended house, with the wood covering the insides to give it a warmer and more relaxed feel. Halfway through pulling it all together and he knew he was going to need to do another session or three of wood and stone collection. He’d vastly underestimated how much material went into building, or maybe he was just terribly inefficient. Either way, sitting back down on the sand, he watched as Frick floated through the forest to join him.

“Why aren’t you teleporting?” asked Nate.

“Think some of the creatures are sensitive to it, Boss, and you said to stay out of trouble. Kiri is doing the same. Walking rather than using her little Soul Teleport trick. Same reason I am not using Conceptual Sight of the Runic Artist at any great distance. Some things are sensitive around here. Keeping it real sneaky!”

Nate nodded. He had expected that was the reason, but wanted to be sure. Especially since he had been using some spatial Skills, albeit just Spatial Anchors.

“Find anything?”

“Yep. Found a Dungeon. I marked it. Came back to update the map. Then I’m going back out. Still got a lot of area to cover and it’s slow going without throwing our mana and Skills around like we’re a baller at a brothel,” Frick replied with a grin.

Nate rolled his eyes, satisfied with the fact that for the next six months Frick couldn’t get near a brothel, with the quiet hope that the time away from them would break his perverted Familiar of the habit. He had his doubts though. Pulling out a sheet of paper and some charcoal, Nate fashioned a mini-table for Frick to draw on. Thankfully, Frick could tap into Nate’s own Skill. Also, unless Nate missed his guess, Frick had also been practising his own artistic skills, as the resulting map was quite good, detailing the roughly one kilometre radius from where they were, where the Dungeon entrance was located, and a couple of notes about some beasts nearby.

Everything was going according to plan. Their home would be done before midday at this rate, Frick’s scouting had already identified a Dungeon, and Kiri seemed to be handling the beasts of the jungle without much issue. That was the moment a bestial roar reverberated through the trees and Nate sensed Kiri bolting for him and the beach with something that might be described as a jaguar with six legs in hot pursuit. Well, they did come to this Wild Realm to level. It was time to team up with his sister and establish their claim on this area of the jungle.