Essence Wave Book 2 Chapter 12

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

So, decent week, hence two chapters today, but most of the writing happened today, hence why only posting both today. Hopefully next week is better. I'm down to 3 chapters (including both stories) of backlog, so there should be two chapters next week but that is not certain. 

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

“Has anyone heard from Clancy or Dylan this afternoon?” David asked his advisory council after dinner. They’d gathered together to discuss plans for the next couple of days.

“Clancy is still on his way to Salida,” Josiah said. “Dylan left after giving his report to scout the Daemons some more. That fortress is going to be a problem.”

“Are we ready to assault it, though?” Colin asked.

“Not in the least,” Josiah frowned. “I’m honestly not sure when we would be able to without taking ruinous losses.”

“Guerrilla warfare then? Hit them over and over again until they bleed enough for us to take it?” David asked.

“That is an option,” Josiah said, looking thoughtfully at the map. “We have trained a few smaller teams. The fortress is near where 285 and 24 split, just south of the airport. If we send one team north along 321, or near it, they could hit the Corruption farms here.”

“Another team could go north on the other side of the river,” Liz pointed, “and cross back over the river on the rail line or on 285.”

“If those bridges still exist,” Aly said. “I’ve been seeing a lot of structures deteriorating quickly. The river also increased in size significantly.”

“So if someone does go across the river, they need to be able to swim back across in a contested area, potentially,” Michelle said, looking at the map.

“Are there any rafts or canoes left here?” David pointed to the whitewater rafting spot a bit north of them.

“Burned down,” Aly said, “but good thoughts. There is another rafting company here,” she indicated where 285 crossed the Arkansas, “that might have some left. If we head north, kill a bunch of Daemons, and then hop on a raft to get back faster.”

“It’s a double date then,” Liz said. “The four of us will poke the hornet’s nest, while a couple of teams head around the other way and try to free any of the slaves that we can. They have to know we’re here, so it’s not like we’re losing the element of surprise.”

“As long as you promise to run if something like that Daemon Lord shows up,” Michelle said, looking worried. “I don’t think we can survive if you four die.”

“Nah, Josiah here can take over,” David said. “It’ll be harder, sure, but you’ll make do.”

“So, when should we leave?” Colin asked.

“Not for a few days,” Josiah said. “We need to set up provisions and train the other teams better.”

“And you all need to work on your Sneak Skill,” Aly said. “If we’re going to infiltrate an enemy stronghold, we need to hide until we are ready.”

“Okay, two days from now we’ll start,” David said. “What are we working on tonight and tomorrow then?”

“Building, research, training,” Michelle said. “With the design mode opened to us, we made a bunch of changes to the standard Loghouse and need to build a dozen of them. It’ll give our people a lot more privacy and improve morale. After that, the health and sanitation upgrades we’re researching need to get pushed ahead as best as you can. Thankfully, it looks like your assistant can continue to research after you leave, so we get the full eight hours out of him. Unfortunately, we can’t have a second shift of researchers to continue work.”

“I don’t understand why so many of the buildings and upgrades are locked behind research limitations,” Aly said. “Why can’t we just build them?”

“Inscriptions,” Michelle answered. “Every building after the most basic is powered in some way by Inscriptions.”

“Energy and Mana usage too,” Dan said. “When I put together the water retriever, I had to redesign the pulley part three times, or it just kept falling apart. Using Energy and Mana in the construction is necessary, and we have to figure out how to make it work.”

“We could buy blueprints, though,” David said. “From the Market. Can you get someone to go through the Market and get a list of likely purchases? It’d save us time, which is more important right now than saving credits.”

“You should also make some more of those trap rocks from when we were fleeing here,” Josiah said. “I found one and sold it for five credits. Since all they take is some stone and your Mana, it might be worth it to earn some easy credits.”

“Really, five credits? I bet I can make better ones now,” David said. “I’ll pencil that in for tonight as well.”

“Along with trying to cultivate for the first time,” Dan said. “You wanted to work on it, remember?”

“Good point,” David laughed. “Good thing I don’t need much sleep anymore!” They discussed more plans for the next few days, training and money making dominating the talk. “With more credits, we can upgrade and grow faster. So, I’ll start with looking at what the Market offers for a quick Fireball trap, then try to iterate up to a better version first. No more than three hours, though, then I’ll work with Dan to see about generating some Essence.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Michelle said. “Can you put some Mana and Energy into the tax crystal? I want to see if you have a different conversion rate. That goes for all of you.”

“Isn’t the rate a thousand of each to one City Essence?” David asked as he moved around the map table.

“Nope,” she said with a frown, “For the couple of people I’ve had try, it looks more like twenty thousand. It’s different for everyone.”

“Well, even at that I can make one or two a day by myself,” David said. “Just make sure to dump a thousand in every time I pass one.” He walked out of the main doors of his mansion. To his right was a pillar of black stone with a small replica of the City Crystal floating over the top. The pillar had three outcroppings where handprints were imprinted in the rock. David walked up and put his hands on the indicated spots.

Current City Essence Store: 7,256 / 25,000

Insert Mana and Energy to create City Essence: Yes/No

Current Tax Required: 0 (Waived for City Lord)

“Well, nice to see I don’t have to pay taxes in my city,” he laughed. “Alright, here we go.” He focused on the Yes option, and was prompted to give an amount. He put in a thousand since he was full, and felt it start to pull his resources out of his hands. It wasn’t painful, but something about the flow felt wrong. He activated Scholar’s Vision and tried to trace the energies. Huh, there’s a bunch flowing into the stone that isn’t reaching the Crystal. He tried to will them to flow upward, and a tiny bit more got to the top. Over the next two minutes, he tried to twist and manipulate his Mana and Energy to get into the Crystal, but nothing he did improved it very much. Maybe I just need to push it faster? A quick check of his status showed he was still full, the flow out equal or less than his natural recharge rate. Okay, this will take too long.

He mentally grabbed a massive amount of Mana and an equal chunk of Energy and pulled them out of his cores. Following the directions he’d figured out with Advanced Bodily Repair, he braided them together, sending equal amounts to either hand. With a grunt, he shot the combined resources into the pillar and watched as around half of it reached the top.

“What was that?” Michelle asked, looking at a screen in front of her.

He described what he did, “Too much of the Mana wasn’t reaching the top, so I thought to increase the pressure. I put a hundred Mana and Energy into a pulse, and got fifty-ish percent of it there?”

“Huh, so fifty of each made it, that gave point zero five City Essence. The first bit you got point two out of…” Michelle asked.

“A thousand,” David answered. “That gives me a base efficiency of twenty percent? Not too shabby, I guess.”

“Yes, but forcing it like you did gave you a fifty percent efficiency. Much better. Thanks for the data,” Michelle said. “Colin, you’re next. David, I believe Jamie and Ben are at the Workshop now, if you want to go work on your Inscriptions. They have become the rune gurus.”

“Sure, have fun,” David said. “I’ll come back and practice before going to bed.”

Aly gave him a side hug, then the others waved as he jogged down the gravel road to the Workshop. The large building was quiet, causing David to look around. After a second, the door opened and Sarah came out. Behind her also came the sound of banging metal, sawing wood, and shouting. It cut off again as soon as the door shut. “Oh, good afternoon David,” the older woman said.

“Good evening. What do you got there?” David asked.

She held up a scarf, “Me and Suzy have been working on knitting scarves for everyone. It has been so cold recently that anything will help. Here, use your Examine Skill on it.” She handed him the roll of greyish-brown fabric. “We haven’t gotten a chance to make any dye, so it’s the color of linen.”

“You’ve already gotten some linen from the flax plants we put down what, two days ago?” David asked, then used Scholar’s Vision on the scarf.

Name: Beginner Knit Neck Scarf

Description: Linen fabric scarf created with an infusion of Fire Mana and Energy. Increases warmth of the wearer by a small amount.

“Only two plants worth,” Sarah said. “Liz and Summer used a spell to force the growth of a plant and taught James, Dave, and Barry, who are lower level people following their path. Those three together were able to get another one done, even if it took them three times as long.”

“Awesome. Well, don’t let me keep you. I was just looking for Jamie and Ben, if they are here,” David said.

“Oh yes, they are. They have their own room, after Ben blew up Austin’s desk,” she waved her hand. “Straight ahead then turn left when you go through the doorway. Good luck.”

“Have a great night,” David said, stepping aside so she could walk off. Once she passed him, he entered the building. Straight ahead of him was another double door, ten meters away. To his left and right, though, were dozens of desks and workbenches, almost all of which had someone leaning over them. There were people sewing leather pieces together, several carving away at wood blocks, and others putting together something with a set of gears. As much as I want to see what everyone is working on, I need to focus on my own projects, he thought as he moved through the open space to the doorway.

He found a smaller room lined with stone and a steel workbench, with Jamie the Metal Mage and a guy who looked to be in his mid-twenties, except for a shock of pure white hair. He stood about one hundred eighty centimeters tall and extremely skinny. Ben turned to see who opened the door and David was shocked at his light grey eyes. “Goo, good evening, uh, Lord Black, sir,” Ben said, stuttering on the first word and jumping to a quasi-attention position.

“No need for that,” David said. “I was told that you two are the people to speak to about learning more Mana Inscriptions. I want to work on improving the traps I made on our march to the city, Jamie.”

“That should be fun,” the teenager answered, shoving her shoulder into Ben’s gut. “Come on, I told you he’d be cool.”

“I, I just don’t li, like new people,” Ben stuttered, looking down at the ground.

“Well, if you don’t want me around, that’s fine,” David said kindly. “I can go work on my own, or steal Jamie here and go somewhere else. We’ve all been through a lot, and if you need quiet, that is okay. Okay?”

He looked up at David, a quick, nervous glance, then back at his shoes, before he quietly said, “No, you can stay. It is your building anyway. Ca, can you show me your design?”

“Sure,” David said, then he looked around. A stack of stone blocks on the corner got his attention, so he walked over and grabbed one. With a thought, he summoned a knife out of Metal Mana, and quickly carved the runes he’d done before, infusing the brick with his desire for it only to explode when a Daemon is in the radius.

Name: Novice Fireball Trap

Level: 10

Description: Stone containing a novice version of the Fireball Skill. Detonates with tiny damage to a small area when stepped on. Will detonate a second after a Daemon enters the damage area.

“Huh, still Novice. I was hoping it’d’ve gone up with my Mana-Inscription Skill,” he said, then handed it to Ben.

“It’s be, because the rune is from a No, Novice Fireball Skill,” Ben said. “We, we’ve got the runes up to Beginner for Fi, Fireball and Mana Gre, Grenade.”

“I wonder if I could do something with my Mana Bolt Skill, since it’s at Beginner 8,” David frowned thoughtfully.

“I’ve had a thought of replacing guns with something like that, or like the ballista on the Watchtowers,” Jamie said. “No idea how to do it, though. A Mana Bolt Inscription just sends a single bolt and then crumbles. We don’t know how to make a reusable Inscription yet.”

David shrugged, “Yet another thing to go on the to-do pile. Let’s focus on what I came here for, and we can see about future Inscription research later. Though we do need more than two people working on these.”

“There’s a couple others,” Jamie said, “but they are on the hunting teams. Eric and Bryan will be here tomorrow. Caleb dabbles a bit.” She made a cute sideways frown. “That’s it though. You’re right, we could produce a lot more of these if we had more people.”

“How did you, you get the trigger effect?” Ben asked, pulling our conversation back to the Novice Fireball Trap.

“Uh, when I infuse the Mana into the carved runes, I focus my will on what I want,” David said.

“Look,” Ben said, pulling another stone piece out and handing it to him.

Name: Beginner Fireball Trap

Level: 1

Description: Stone containing a Beginner version of the Fireball Skill. Detonates with small damage to a small area when stepped on.

“Huh, so this has to be stepped on, and it isn’t safe for friendlies,” David said. “Have you tried to sell these?”

“Yes, wa, we did,” Ben said. “Ten sold for one cre, credit.”

“And mine sold for five credits each, so the triggering effect is worth a ton,” David said. “So, I got the Mana-Inscription Skill by evolving Mana-Imprinting. Didn’t you do the same, Jamie?”

She blushed, “Yes, but it somehow didn’t occur to me how to do that. I’ve only been using Imprinting for armor. How about Ben and I try to use Imprinting to set a trigger, and you work on learning the Beginner Fireball rune?”

“Sure thing,” David said. “Do you have it on a chalkboard or paper from other angles?”

Ben pulled out a binder full of papers, then leafed through it quickly before handing him three sheets. One had the front view, another the rear view, and then the third had left and right views, which weren’t very big as the rune had very little depth.

“Thanks,” David said, then moved away from them a bit, grabbed four pieces of stone, and sat down on the ground. He spent the next half hour memorizing the rune before he slowly started to carve. Every few strokes he stopped and looked at the papers, comparing what he had made to the reference material. When he finished, he looked over the carving twice. Looks good, he thought before he started to push his Mana into the stone.

Two hundred and fifty Mana flowed into it before he couldn’t put any more in. “Nice, first try,” David said, and then it sparked and blew up in his face. His head whacked painfully against the wall, and his ears rang for a few seconds before his regeneration fixed the issue. “Ow.”

“You okay?” Jamie asked.

“Yeah, that barely shaved five hundred Hit Points off. I’ll be right as rain soon enough,” David said. “Just gotta figure out what went wrong.”

“I, I can look over the ru, rune for you next time,” Ben offered.

“I’ll take you up on that,” David said. “Have you all had any luck?”

“I managed to make one that won’t ever explode,” Jamie said, “and then my second will only detonate if a Daemon steps on it, so progress!”

“Excellent!” David grinned up at the excited teenager to see Ben also giving him a thumbs up. “Even better. Hopefully the Beginner level traps will sell even better and we can get a good income stream for the city.”

“I’m only working on Novice ones,” Jamie said. “It is easier to Imprint a smaller amount of Mana.”

“Th, the Beginner ones work as a gre, grenade, too,” Ben said. “Maybe I, I should look at making th, them smaller for that purpose.”

“Sure,” David said. “If we could arm everyone with a grenade against Daemons only, that would be awesome. That would have annihilated the entire enemy army that came against us.”

“It would give fighters like yourself another ability too,” Jamie said. “Like when you charged us earlier you could have thrown one and made it blow up next to me.”

“All good ideas, but let’s focus on what we’re working on for now,” David laughed. “Or the good idea fairy will distract us all evening.”

Jamie smiled and nodded at him, grabbing her metal awl and starting to carve another trap. Ben had already begun to work, so David picked up another piece of stone. Thankfully, my body protected these chunks, or I’d have to get new ones. No more blowing up, he glared at the rock, then shook his head and began to carve. This one took him even longer, a solid twenty minutes of cutting and checking before he finished. It was another few minutes before Ben reached a stopping point, and David called, “Hey, can you check this out?”

“Su, sure,” Ben stammered and walked over to take the prospective trap.

David stood and handed it to him, then went to look at what Jamie was doing. He used his Scholar’s Vision to try and see the flow of her Mana. “How’s it look?” he asked when she glanced up at him.

She focused on the rune, and nodded after a second. “Got it, though the area went down to tiny for some reason.”

“Did you keep putting in Mana until it didn’t let you keep going?” David asked.

“No, I stopped at the same point as I normally did,” she said, then glanced up at the sky in exasperation. “Of course, I bet the trigger effect takes extra Mana. Dang it.”

“Live and learn,” David said. “It’s still a success.”

“The carving is goo, good,” Ben said. “Try again?”

“Take two!” David said, then moved to the far corner and inserted the Mana, after activating his Mana Shield and the new effect of his armor. One minute later, that proved prescient as the trap blew up again. “And fail.”

“I, I think that it’s too much Ma, Mana,” Ben said. “I have a Ski, Skill that let’s me see Mana, and it see, seemed to overflow the stone a, at the end.”

“Try three,” David said. He didn’t carve as long this time, and Ben approved it after he finished, then he dropped two hundred Mana into it. This time, it didn’t blow up.

Name: Beginner Fireball Trap

Level: 3

Description: Stone containing a Beginner version of the Fireball Skill. Detonates with small damage to a small area when stepped on. Will detonate a second after a Daemon enters the damage area.

“Success,” David smiled at them.