EG Book 7 Chapter 19

*** AUTHOR’S NOTE ***

Work is blarg. That is all.

*** AUTHOR’S NOTE ***

I decided to create the first new layer to my Core a few hours after recovering from the Harpy attack. I placed two level five Beast Cores, one from the Dungeon and one that was Lightning Affinity, in the Inscriptions to increase the Aether density in my room by an order of magnitude.

I sat on my bed, breathing deeply to relax, then fell into my center. With a thought, I created the full Triple Runic Spiral Technique, all three spirals extending out of my body and almost reaching to the wall behind me. Immediately, the Aether density dropped as I absorbed as much as I could. Quickly, my center filled up, and then my meridians.

After a few minutes, I was holding as much Aether as I normally could. Here’s the hard part, I thought, gotta pull in twice this much. Ugh, this is going to hurt, isn’t it? I groaned, but kept pulling the Aether in as fast as I could.

After ten minutes, I was feeling bloated. Every meridian was overloaded, uncomfortably stretching outward to hold all the Aether I was absorbing. It flooded into my body, my bones, muscles, and organs holding more than they normally could as well. I felt full, painfully distorted, with my everything barely holding on. It wasn’t enough, yet.

Twenty minutes after I started, my entire body was shaking. The Aether I’d gathered was pulsing, barely under control anymore. My Core was full, my center uncomfortably stretched, my meridians distended, and I finally felt that I was ready.

With a thought, I pushed every bit of Aether out of my body into my meridians. They ballooned even further, but my mind was ready, and I clamped down on them. My center absorbed the massive influx of Aether, and I grabbed it all, crushing it onto my Core. I infused into it the runic structure I was pushing towards, and forced voids where it was required. My Geist flowed into my Aether, supercharging it and compressing it at the same time.

I bellowed in agony, strain, and joy, as every bit of Aether I had stored and gathered compressed to form a single additional layer of my Core, with the barest hint of the runic structure evident in a few miniscule gaps left open. I felt empty.

It soon passed, the Beast Cores still discharging into the air and my gathering technique still pulling Aether into me at a fast clip. My Core filled, slowly, taking around forty minutes to fill up. My center then took another thirty minutes before I felt reasonably full again.

Once ready, I hopped off my bed and stretched, my muscles tight from the concentration required to advance even a single step. “Only a thousand more of those to reach Complete Core,” I laughed. “Lightning blast it, this is going to take a while. Thirty minutes for just one layer, and the next one will take longer. How long will each layer take in Constructed Core? In Complete Core? And that’s with having a ridiculous amount of Aether available. I guess Bruno will be extremely busy forever, since he provides a large number of level four, five, and six Beast Cores that are perfect for everyone’s gathering capability.”

I shook my head, “I really hope we can find a Dungeon like him in Craesti, and not another crazy one that needs to be destroyed. Though, I’m still kinda worried about what his appearance means. Is he still helping Chaos, even if he doesn’t mean to? And even if he is, is the benefit he gives to everyone greater than the damage he does?” I shrugged, then bent over to stretch my hamstrings.

“Nothing I can do about it, no way to answer that question yet,” I told myself. “Plus, I don’t want to kill Bruno over something that he doesn’t have any control over. So, moving on.”

I walked out of the room to find the common area empty. An increase in the Aether density around the runes on the Forge and Inscription rooms told me someone was inside them, working. I peaked out the door to find Ming and Lea talking quietly, with Lea holding the compass loosely in her right hand. They were glancing around at the sky and sea every few seconds,

I pulled my head back in, then thought, Now would be a good time to work on Alchemy, I guess. I went into the Alchemy lab, then frowned at the large stack of boxes along the back wall. “Well, I guess we had to put stuff somewhere,” I said. “First things first, what do I want to work on?” With a laugh, I shook my head and commented, “That kinda depends on what all we got. Inventory time!”

Two hours later, Jon poked his head into the Alchemy room. “Light! What are you doing?” He exclaimed.

“Inventory,” I told him. The work tables were covered in items, pages of paper were stuck to each box behind him, and I was counting out Cyan Lily Petals into a small glass jar. “Wasn’t sure what I wanted to make, so I decided we needed to know everything that we have available as ingredients.”

“There is more in my room, Lea’s room, and one of the empty rooms,” Jon said.

I sighed. “This is tedious and boring, but necessary. Can you grab the stuff from your room and I’ll go through them?”

“Nah,” Jon said. “I will inventory the rest. You make something neat that we can all use.”

“Well, I do have a recipe for an Ice Affinity boosting pill,” I said, “called the Polar Vortex Chill Pill. We have the ingredients.” I stood and grabbed a box from the second row. Metal Aether shot out of me to support the boxes above it, and I gently set them down so nothing broke. “Enough to make fifty of them. Should let me get fourteen made successfully.”

“Cool, I would love to get my Ice Affinity higher,” Jon said. “I will be back in a bit.”

“Thanks,” I told him, digging out Snowdrop Petals, Camellia Blooms (of which I needed the stamen), and Glory Of Snow Flower Stalks. A different box held Nordlig Maple Bark, White Cotoneaster Berries, and Nandina Leaf. Three more boxes held the rest of the twenty six ingredients I needed.

Once I had the ingredients set out, I pulled out my new Alchemy set, grinning at the amazing gift Librarian Narwan had given me. I grabbed the dark blue marble mortar, feeling the resonance it had with the Water Aether in the air around me. “This should be good for most of it,” I said, then grabbed the lightly purple colored pillar of metal. I channeled a tiny amount of Ice Aether into it, and it flowed smoothly through the pestle.

I set the pill furnace aside, carefully positioning it so that I could get it started soon, but I had a number of items I could preprocess to improve my success rate. I pulled out the Knowledge Stone that Librarian Narwan had included in the gift, and quickly reviewed it. Three different grinding techniques, thirty seven different ways to use the pill furnace, and a general knowledge of ingredient preparation was included on the stone. Wow, that’s a lot, I thought, but I definitely needed it. According to the information I just got, using the pill furnace is significantly more complicated than I thought it would be. I can use the Ice Firmament Pill Condensate Technique to create the pills! I might even get more than one out of a batch with it. Neat!

Glory Of Snow Flower Stalks were placed in the mortar first, and I ran my Aether through the mortar and pestle. I could feel and see the Ice Aether in the stalk get separated from Water and Wood, and the Wood was almost refined into something different, a lavender tinge added to the green. Huh, what is going on there? I thought, leaning in.

A tiny stream of Air Aether into my eyes enhanced my Aether Sight, allowing me to see the effects of the pestle crushing the stalk into paste. After a few rotations, I frowned. The change isn’t even, I realized, I got to rotate both directions! Immediately, I started to crush the greenery sunward, three full circles before I did one more widdershins like I’d begun.

After the change, I alternated back and forth, and quickly saw the lavender spread evenly across all of the Wood Aether. The Water Aether seemed to evaporate into the air, and Ice Aether had become a blue-purple, lighter than Water but darker than Air. Once the paste was ready, I gently scraped it off the mortar and into a bowl. Two more ingredients, the Camellia Bloom Stamen and the Nandina Leaf, were then ground up as well, this time together.

The Camellia Bloom Stamen was interesting, as it was Elementally aligned with Lightning instead of the Wood and Ice of the rest of the flower. The Lightning acted as a catalyst, sparking the Nandina Leaf’s Wood Aether into Ash and Growth Aether somehow, removing every bit of Water from it. After this mixture was ground up, it was dumped into the bowl as well, and then a quarter-liter of Moonlit Glow Sap was poured in. I set the mixture aside to soak, flipping a five-minute timer over as I did so.

Two more sets of pastes were created, one a mixture of the Snowdrop Petals and the pit of an Arctic Supreme Peach, which I had to crack with a hammer blow of Earth Aether before I could grind it up. I used the Volcanic Iron pestle, Earth and Metal Aether flowing through it to grind up the pit into powder that then deepened the Ice Aether into Arctic Aether, making my hand feel cold even from two dozen centimeters away from it as I scraped it into a second bowl.

Once three bowls were soaking away, stirred each time the timer went off, I started a pot of Pure Spring Water boiling and mixed in the Nordlig Maple Bark, White Cotoneaster Berries, and Snowball Bush Flower Petals. I waited until half of the water evaporated and then added the pre-ground pastes into it. The concoction flared, Aether interactions trying to break apart what I’d made, and my Aether sunk into the water, pulling apart and smoothing out snarls in the Aether flows within the brew.

After another ten minutes, I’d gotten it under control and let nearly all the water boil away. Once ready, I pulled the pot off the burner, swirling Water and Ice through it to bring the temperature down rapidly. This goop was then scooped into the mortar and pestle again, and ground together while I ran Fire Aether through the Flamewrought Copper pestle this time.

Another pot was set to heat up, though I kept the setting at its lowest point. Above it, I connected a few tubes and a hood to create a condensation drip point into a bottle. In the pot went the flesh of the Arctic Supreme Peach, Glacier Water, and some more Cotoneaster Berries that were squished. I stirred the pot with one stream of Aether while continuing to grind up the first mixture.

A few minutes of muscle work, Aether manipulation, and drips of condensate gave me about twenty milliliters of slightly pinkish water. I poured it into the mortar, then began to grind in the pattern of the Ice rune. Sixteen times I created the rune, and then immediately dumped every bit of it into the Elemental Palladium Pill Furnace.

My Aether surged, following the Ice Firmament Pill Condensate Technique to heat and cool different areas of the inside. Ice, Fire, Earth, and Air Aether all swirled throughout the mixture, kneading and combining the pieces while firming it into two lozenge shapes. After five minutes, my Core seemed to vibrate slightly, and an intuition that the pills were too big hit me pretty hard. I glanced at my ingredients, then shrugged, I’ve got enough for a dozen more recipes, we’ll see what this weird feeling is about.

I cut the back third off both pills and crushed it into a third. A feeling of rightness flowed over me, and I nodded. The final stages of the pill technique required me to surround and condense each pill with a cage of Ice and Water Aether. The Elemental Palladium in the furnace made manipulating Aether inside it easier than manipulating it in the air in front of me, and I could see and feel the pills trying to form.

“Condense!” I shouted, burning with power as I poured my Aether into the pill furnace. Every bit of my mind and willpower was spent to crush the pills into existence, while tiny flickers of Fire and Lightning Aether played across the surface of them to burn away tiny impurities that stuck up out of the smooth surface.

It took another thirty minutes and half my Aether to finally get the pills to form, and with a loud thump the pill furnace lid bounced up, signifying the finish. I pulled the lid off, panting in exertion, and grinned wildly. “Two normal pills and an exceptional one! Sweet, I almost can’t believe I got it right the first time!” I shouted, jumping in glee for a second before gently picking up the pills and dropping them in a jar for safekeeping. “Alright, let’s make another dozen.”

I pulled out another set of ingredients, and got to work.