Blue Core Week Forty (Patreon)

Day 131 - Annit

She hated the weakness.

Annit could still move about perfectly well, and didn’t feel too weary to go about her normal business, but she could feel that her stamina pool had been massively reduced and she didn’t have the normal strength or agility a level thirty-five Classer should have. It felt more like she was level ten, which she hadn’t been in years. Or that she was twice as old as she was, since levels did nothing to offset the passage of time. Even though she actually moved like a low-level Classer in her fit early twenties, she felt like an arthritic old woman.

It wasn’t like she’d had no depletion before, but each time she’d encountered it, it’d been one point at a time. Some strange twist in the local mana, some corrupt bite of a beast, barely noticeable without checking her Status. It was easy enough to outlevel and outpace, and under normal circumstances barely slowed her or anyone else down until their leveling stalled out completely.

Keri’s worried eyes following her wherever she went didn’t help, either.

She had to grudgingly admit that Blue’s [Restful Night] was a great help. Even when she wasn’t actually asleep it toned down the gut-gnawing fear and anxiety at the back of her mind. When she wasn’t reliving that awful feeling of something vital being ripped from her as Depletion took hold, she was thinking over how Blue had warned them that once they were in, there was no way out. That had been far too prophetic for her tastes.

The weight of Keri’s gaze on her only added to the shame of fighting a losing battle against a freestanding log, still trying to get used to exactly how little speed she had with her downranked [Wind Blade] and [Grace of Air]. Blue’s weapon still worked well enough, but with so much less behind it the results were less than spectacular. Whereas before she could sever the log with a good blow, now she was merely taking chunks out of it. Slowly.

Annit sighed and deactivated the Skills, stowing the blowgun back in its holster as she turned away from her test dummy. Keri was by her side in a moment, taking her arm, and Annit nearly pulled away before she caught herself. It wouldn’t be fair to take out her attitude on Keri, and even though she was technically at full health she had to admit the feeling of Keri’s healing mana flowing into her was soothing.

“Any improvement?” She asked, her golden-green eyes the only real points of color. Everything else seemed faded and lesser; but everything not Keri hardly mattered anyway. The touch made her want to just submerge herself in Keri’s attentions, but even that thought made her skin crawl. Not because of Keri, but because all she could think about was Blue staring down at them. A squeeze on her arm made her realize she hadn’t actually answered Keri’s question, having yet again drifted off into her own dark reflections.

“No,” Annit sighed, though it wasn’t like either of them had really been expecting anything to improve. “Same as ever.”

Keri’s mouth popped open, but then she shut it without saying anything. Instead she snuggled in closer, gripping Annit’s arm more possessively as they made their way back toward the house. The silent support felt like it lifted a weight from her heart, though she knew that she was dragging Keri down, leaning too heavily on her lover with every step they took. The hospital had finally cleared out, and though occasionally someone was brought in from Meil it was just empty for the moment. Just the two of them. And Blue, who was always there.

Annit knew what Keri was thinking. Blue had offered them a way for Annit to regain everything she’d lost. It was just not something she could afford to take. She didn’t blame Keri for wanting her to take it, or even being curious for her own sake, but it just wasn’t something Annit could contemplate. Taking that way out would be betraying herself, which meant betraying Keri, which meant betraying everything that they’d been and built all at once. It’d just collapse everything that she was, that they were, even if she could accept the act itself.

Which she couldn’t. Everything within her simply shut down and refused at the thought. It was disturbing, nauseating, disgusting. Her whole being simply rejected the concept, her mind stuttered to a halt even getting near it. It was never going to happen.

At least Blue hadn’t pressed them or threatened to kick them out. Their home remained as comfortable as ever, the trees they inevitably destroyed in their practice grew back, and tayantan trees bore blue fruit just outside the rear porch. True, they had to go to Meil to get any other sort of food but Keri’s healing had gotten them enough money and goodwill that it wasn’t a problem. Even with the stockpiling and rationing coming on as everyone prepared for the oncoming army, they weren’t worried about going hungry.

She allowed Keri to pull her onto the small couch on the porch, flexing her fingers and stretching her legs. Even though she hadn’t quite depleted her stamina pool, there was still a certain weariness from overexertion that wasn’t reflected by stats. As levels rose, that sort of tiredness faded in one of those benefits that was hard to notice until it was taken away.

Keri nestled into her side, and Annit relaxed against her, trying not to scowl. Trying, and failing because the only other expression she could find was bleak and blank and far too revealing. Revealing how she kept staring into space and not thinking of anything at all, or how she just wanted to lie down in bed and do nothing. If it weren’t for Keri she probably would be doing just that.

A prickly sort of weight settled on her and she shuddered, involuntarily cast back to that moment of sundering by what she now knew to be Blue’s attention. She knew what almost always followed that attention, so she struggled back upright, giving Keri’s hand a squeeze.

“Shayma’s going to be here any moment.”

Keri looked at her, slightly surprised but without any question. For some reason Keri wasn’t nearly as sensitive to it as she was, barely noticing when the force of Blue’s regard swept past them, but she trusted that Annit was right. Sure enough, a minute later Shayma rapped on the porch door, which was polite but unnecessary.

“Come on out,” Keri called, and Shayma obeyed, settling into one of the other porch seats.

“How are you two doing?” The fox-girl asked, clearly concerned but, to Annit’s ear, not particularly hopeful of any answer other than the obvious.

Annit answered for both of them with a derisive grunt, slumping back down in the couch. That was as much as the question deserved, under the circumstances. Shayma knew as much as anyone, maybe even better than anyone, that Depletion didn’t go away. Her concern was genuine but it still grated, making her grit her teeth against whatever incoherent complaints she might have.

Shayma looked over at them, brow wrinkled in sympathy.

“With the army coming, there will probably be a good opportunity to get some experience, maybe offset it with extra levels.”

“That doesn’t fix anything,” Annit objected immediately, then pressed her lips together. Keri rubbed her shoulder soothingly, looking to Shayma.

“I think we’ll stay here,” Keri told Shayma. “Just like last time. There’s no need for us to be out by the fighting.” In a way that was the best place for Keri to be, less to deal with immediate severe injuries and more to prevent the slow accumulation of minor injuries that led to catastrophe. Neither of them were ready to actually be in the midst of fighting yet, though. Probably not until they’d pushed their Skills in their third tier, especially Annit’s [Bodyguard] which could evolve into something really special.

Of course, that didn’t seem likely to happen anymore.

Shayma gave her a look of sympathy, and Annit realized she’d said some of that out loud. Or maybe just thought some of it loudly enough that words were unnecessary. The fox-girl shifted, curling her tail about as she regarded the two of them, and it wasn’t just Annit who was thinking loudly enough to be heard. When she opened her mouth it simply confirmed it.

“The offer is still open,” Shayma said. “Blue could still— ”

“No.” Annit replied flatly, before Shayma even finished. That just was not an option she could take.

“Annie,” Keri said, leaning in against her. “I hate how much it hurts you. I hate the way you look when you feel what’s missing.”

“I hate it too,” she said. “But I can’t. I just can’t, Ker.”

“You know I wouldn’t mind,” Keri assured her. “I just don’t want you to keep being like this.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” Annit sighed. She didn’t even know how to explain it. It was simply that she couldn’t take Blue’s offer, not without breaking something inside herself. The problem wasn’t Blue, or even Keri. The problem was she just couldn’t.

“Blue doesn’t mind if you don’t like him,” Shayma said. “He says— ”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Annit growled. Shayma paused, ears flicking as Blue said something to her. She nodded, then refocused on Annit.

“This argument has been going on for a while, so, he is officially offering to Purify you, with no further debt, considering the circumstances under which you incurred the Depletion.”

She took a deep breath. If she turned it down, she’d never be able to keep up with Keri. She wouldn’t be able to protect Keri, and she had no idea how they’d be able to move forward together. It hurt, desperately hurt, but if she accepted she wouldn’t ever feel right again, not with Keri or with anyone.

“My answer is no,” she said. Her voice cracked halfway through, but she said it.

“Annie— ” Keri began, but Shayma held up her hand.

“Blue says he thinks you made a good decision,” Shayma said, sounding as if she didn’t belive it herself.

“What?” Keri asked in bewilderment, and Annit gritted her teeth against a sudden surge of anger. If he thought that, why was he offering? Why did he think that, in fact? Maybe she was simply not good enough, or pretty enough, or maybe it was just that Blue didn’t like her attitude.

“Blue says…” Shayma paused again, though she couldn’t tell whether that was because Blue had more to say or she was trying to figure out how to say it. “You can’t save yourself if you’re destroyed by the attempt. That Annit is too much herself to take Blue’s offer without losing that same self, and he didn’t want that to happen. He also says that you won’t be discarded or forgotten, and he is trying to figure out different ways to remove Depletion. There is still hope, but it’s doubtful that whatever he figures out will be easy or free.”

The anger faded as she listened to Shayma, replaced with something else she couldn’t quite name. She had not expected Blue to understand, let alone explain it to Keri and Shayma. Even now she wasn’t sure that they understood, or that Blue’s explanation was exactly right, but it was better than anything she’d come up with. It was clear that she had been wrong about Blue, and that he was not nearly as selfish or conniving as she’d thought. Or even if he was, he had other virtues to balance him.

“Tell Blue…” She licked her lips, her mouth completely dry. “Tell him thank you. If he does find another way, I’m not afraid of hard work.”

Shayma nodded and Annit slumped against Keri, unspeakably relieved. She hadn’t even realized how much the worry over that choice had drained her, just that now that it was done she felt like she could breathe again. Even if she was as weak as a day-old kitten. Especially since Blue offered some hope of another path back to where she had been.

“It still might be worth joining us in Meil,” Shayma offered, then made a face as she realized what she had said. “Well, where Meil will have been. We’re going to be using the Adamant Fortress and if you’re not safe there, you won’t be anywhere. You’ll still feel better with a few more levels, even if it’s only a little bit.”

“We’ll think about it,” Keri said for her, squeezing her hand. Annit looked over to see that she still looked worried, but this worry was less pained and more determined. Any protests she might have made fell away under that look and Annit nodded.

“We’ll think about it.”

Day 132 - Blue

I was actually pretty pleased with how things had gone with Keri and Annit, especially after the troubles with Ansae. Pleased with that, but not with what had happened. Annit’s eyes were so empty it was hard to take, even though I didn’t know her that well, so I hoped I could come up with some solution for her. I figured that solution would have something to do with crafting though, so I was running stuff through my [Mana Diamond Anvil] regularly and slowly building up a tiny stockpile of supermaterials.

Since there was little else I could do for her at the moment, I went on to try and prune down my list of other tasks After setting aside a pool of experience points to boost Shayma, I’d capped out my storage crystals and my spatial fields, as well as polishing off [Fluid Handling] and rounding things out with a single point in Fabrication. My gains were a thousand capacity storage crystal, meaning I could get myself up to nearly two hundred thousand mana if I needed to, a size five portable storage crystal that could be taken out of the dungeon, increased fluid storage capacity, and [Gate].

[Gate] was the pinnacle of my spatial workings, but was ridiculously expensive. I had a hunch I could probably somehow finagle it to use supermaterials instead of regular materials and cut some of the cost down, though it’d still be a steep price. A price worth paying since, according to the description, it made a permanent link between two points. Of course both points needed their own [Gate], doubling the costs of something whose base material was five hundred Adamant Stone. Given the trouble I’d had making enough for even the Mana Diamond Forge it was a little out of reach for the moment, and that didn’t count all the alchemical diamond, silver, gold, and so on in the list.

I was ready to move Meil at any time. According to Iniri we still had another full day before I should start, but I’d already set up the Grassland Climate. I figure it was as neutral as any, and would give me some idea of how they dealt with other structures. If it started overwriting parts of the city I could turn it off with no harm done, and if not I knew I could move Anton’s Village into one.

The Grassland climate produced a very nice area but no new Affinity flowers. It offset that with actually natively producing Fertilizer, which was nice considering otherwise I had to muck about with making it manually or replumb everyone’s houses instead of just attaching their sewers to my Composting Chambers. It made me wonder what the other Climates had to offer and I wished I had the time to play with them, but that would have to wait until after the battle. Setting up stable areas that were large enough, even with spatial fields, was a little tricky.

Even if I didn’t have time for that, I did have time for a completely different idea, one for which I needed the resident alchemist. I was lacking void Affinity so I couldn’t do much for Sienne, but kinetic was well within my wheelhouse and seeing the giant tree-trunk Giorn used had given me an idea. With my new mixing bath and an application of [Mana Diamond Forge] to a bit of kinetic Source, I might be able to able to make something out of tayantan wood.

I wanted that calamite vapor for it though, since I would bet that was some sort of alchemical super-catalyst, and I hoped that Taelah would know how to capture it. She was still in the farming area I’d made, along with the rest of Anton’s Village, and together they were about the only ones who hadn’t moved out. Mostly because Meil still needed the fast-growing crop yields to keep from tilting into starvation. Now that they were linking back up with other farms from before the invasion it wasn’t as bad, but crops took time to grow and storage was an issue. I was glad none of that was my problem.

Shayma was still a little grumpy but happy enough to head over and find Taelah, who was out behind her little cottage working on an herb garden. Which, when I looked at it, was full of plants I didn’t recognize and kind of wanted to steal. Not that I would, but I wanted to. She had on a sunhat, shading her freckled face from the glare of the flat overhead light, as well as a heavy apron with gloves tucked into the pocket for dealing with the less friendly plants.

“Hello, Taelah,” she said, peering around the corner of the house.

“Miss Shayma,” Taelah replied, brushing dirt from her hands. “What can I do for you? Or Blue?”

“Blue has some alchemical issues he was hoping you could solve,” Shayma said cheerfully. “He has a process that makes a vapor that he wants to capture.”

“That’s…” Taelah looked thoughtful. “I know how to do that, but the details depend on so many things. I’d need to see the process and what he’s using before I could come up with a proper solution.” She paused for a moment. “I do have to thank him though because working with those chrystheniums pushed me all the way to the cap for [Novice Alchemy]. When I get to my second tier I’ll be able to start out with the full [Alchemy] skill.”

“That’s great! I’d have to show her the [Mana Diamond Forge] but it’s kind of top secret. You haven’t seen it either yet now that I think about it, it’s pretty great.” I considered a moment while Shayma translated, but I didn’t think that showing Taelah would be a problem.

“He offers his congratulations on your Skill leveling.” Shayma smiled brilliantly, and Taelah smiled back.

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s encouraging that he cares. He seems like he’s just too vast and important for that.”

“Oh, he’s been keeping an eye on you.” Shayma grinned, and chuckled at Taelah’s acknowledging, almost shy nod. Ever since she’d asked about becoming a Companion I’d kept a little closer eye on her and she was both very pragmatic and, so far as I could tell, very committed to staying. Plus she looked really cute in a sunhat. “Okay, I can show you two but she has to not tell anyone about it.”

“Blue will show you, but what you see must be held in strict confidence,” Shayma continued. “Not even I have seen what he’s doing yet.”

“Certainly,” Taelah said, eyes widening slightly. “Give me a moment to fetch my things.”

She darted into her house, taking the time to wash her hands before fetching a tiny case from a small but well-equipped lab. I wasn’t sure exactly when she’d acquired all the alchemical equipment but she’d set up quite the array once I’d given her permission to use chrystheniums. Maybe it had something to do with her advancing Skills; even though my overlay still didn’t give me a full Status I could see that Taelah had gotten [Herbal Medicine] and [Plant Identification] to their maximum, not to mention raising her level to twenty. The [Herbalist] rejoined Shayma out by the herb garden, adjusting her sunhat.

“Ready.”

“I’ll just move you straight there.” Though not as blatant a change as [Blue’s Sagacity], the upgrade to [Mana Finesse] did make it a lot quicker and easier to spin a Teleport field around the two and shift them from the cottage to the interior of the forge room. It took me a moment to realize that I hadn’t actually lit the room, which didn’t matter to Shayma or myself, but for Taelah it made seemed to make quite the impression. Even the normally unflappable Taelah gawked.

The [Mana Diamond Anvil] sparkled in starlit gloom, light spawned from pure mana density dripping along the convolutions of the scaffolding. Its sheer size dwarfed the two women, each of the liquid drops of illumination the size of a thumb where they slid upward from the floor or downward from the ceiling before vanishing as they hazed into the glow around the diamond anvil itself. The shifting, flowing light reflected against the gold wires wound throughout the stone of the room, covering walls, ceiling, and floor.

“Wow, that’s gorgeous,” Shayma enthused. “That’s the [Mana Diamond Anvil]?”

“Yup. It’s super fancy.” I took the opportunity to actually give the place some lights, just so Taelah didn’t bang her shin into some of the scaffolding or something. As amazing as the effect was, it made walking around a bit of a hazard.

“That is…” Taelah’s fingers gripped her case a little too tightly. “Are you sure this is something for an alchemist?”

“She’ll have to get used to dealing with really fancy things if she’s going to be working with me. I haven’t even shown you what this makes.” Taelah nodded slowly as Shayma relayed that in a slightly less flippant manner, fingers tracing over her alchemy case.

“I suppose I should have expected something like this after seeing what else Blue can do. But seeing it is…” She stopped and looked the anvil up and down again. “This is just something else.”

I hadn’t thought about that. So far most people had seen only the public areas I’d made, which were impressive in some ways but were in the end mostly stone and plants. They couldn’t see the mana dynamos themselves, or the mana flows for any of the Fields, so lava was the most dramatic thing I had. It was a shame I couldn’t show the truly interesting things off to more people.

“The actual stuff gets made in that bit of diamond in the middle. I can take most of what it makes out of it directly, but when I can’t I separate the pieces, splitting the diamond in half. That’s when the vapor escapes.” It annoyed me that maximum [Fluid Handling] didn’t do anything to let me handle it, but it wasn’t like I had an [Air] resource either. Maybe with Taelah’s help I could get an upgrade to my [Fluid Handling]. It’d really irk me if handling gasses was a separate category.

“That is not easy.” Taelah peered up at the anvil, reaching out a hesitant hand to the structure but stopping just short of touching it, letting the drops of light flow across her fingers. “Do you know what this vapor you’re trying to catch is?” I could almost see the wheels turning in her head. “Is it corrosive, hot, cold…?”

“Honestly no idea.” Even though I had temperature sight, the gas was weirdly volatile and there was so little of it I hadn’t been able to characterize it much. “The anvil transmutes things into more advanced forms. In this case, I’m using calamite.” I raised a rod of stone from the floor, spreading it out onto a small table and deposited a piece of [Red Calamite] on it for Taelah to look at.

At Shayma’s prodding Taelah tore her gaze away from the anvil and looked at the calamite, squinting at it before reaching into her apron pocket to pull out a pair of thick leather gloves. Only then did she pick it up, turning the piece over in her hands as she studied it. I hadn’t even thought about the possibility that it, or anything I was making, was actually toxic. I’d have to be more careful about that sort of thing going forward. Not everyone was like Ansae and functionally immune to everything.

“Yes, this is a very pure and high quality alchemical catalyst, though I can’t tell everything about it with my [Novice Alchemy].” Taelah put it down, a frown tugging at her lips. “Are you certain you want me to do this? A more skilled alchemist could tell you more, and provide better solutions.”

“I’m sure.” I didn’t want to expand the circle of people I worked with farther than necessary, and from what I’d seen Taelah was fairly trustworthy. She hadn’t tried picking any more flowers than I’d allowed, nor had she shared any of the things she’d made with anyone other than Shayma. As far as I could tell she hadn’t even given the details of what she’d been doing to anyone else in Anton’s Village, and I was starting to like her blunt honesty.

“I have no idea what this transmutation process does, but considering the source material I would expect anything made from it to be quite reactive.” Taelah put the calamite down again, looking back to the anvil. “Can you open it up?”

“It is open. It’s just very very subtle.” I would have to say the gap between the two halves of the diamond was less than a millimeter, and it wasn’t like they were two flat plates. It was pretty well gasketed, and when it was closed so far as I could tell it was all one piece. Even when it was open, it was nearly impossible to tell simply because of the constant light flow and the refractive shine of the alchemical diamond.

“Oh.” Taelah needed perhaps a quarter of a second to take that in before opening her case. “So you have very small amounts of a very reactive alchemical catalyst in vapor form. I have a liquid that’s meant to hold reactive vapor in suspension, but I can’t guarantee it will work. Maybe if you surround the opening with the liquid?” She held up a genuinely tiny bottle, which I would have called a sample vial if it hadn’t lacked a pipette.

“That is absolutely perfect. Liquids I can handle. How do I get the catalyst back out?”

Taelah brightened at the praise, which Shayma had repeated nearly verbatim, putting away that vial and taking out a nearly identical one.

“This is the antagonist. Someday I’ll have a high enough Alchemy skill to make this stuff myself, but for the moment I have to buy it.”

I could read between the lines easily enough. Taelah wasn’t exactly wealthy; her clothes were practically burlap, probably because she spent all her money on alchemy supplies. The two vials probably represented months or years of work.

“I’ll make sure you get replacements,” I assured her. Technically I was obscenely wealthy, but actually turning that into useful purchasing power was a problem. I might have to spend my next payment from Iniri on Taelah’s supplies, not that I minded. Since it turned out I didn’t really get anything from using Assimilation on magical items the deal was not as useful as it might have been.

Taelah put both bottles on the table next to the calamite and I pulled them into inventory where they showed up as a tenth-unit each of [Alchemic Buffer] and [Buffer Antagonist]. It made me wonder what would have happened if I didn’t have [Material Precision]. As it was, that was enough for me to use, which I did by wrapping some alchemical diamond around the central point of the anvil and flooding the gap with the buffer. The hope was that I’d make the vapor, open the anvil, and the buffer would capture the vapor, and with my normal fluid handling I’d be able to pull it into inventory.

I’d need Taelah’s help again to use it, but one step at a time.

“Okay, this thing is all kinds of dangerous when I use it so I’ll have to put you somewhere else.” I’d almost set it off right then and there but fortunately caught myself before being incredibly stupid. At point blank range there was no telling what effects the mana ripple would have. Probably death.

They both looked disappointed, but neither of them argued with me. Even if they’d really wanted to see, I wasn’t sure that a gold cage would be enough to shield them. Instead I moved them down to the other crafting room, where I had my [Assembler] and [Mixing Bath]. Neither of which were as impressive as the [Mana Diamond Anvil] but were still obviously different from basic dungeon construction.

The [Assembler] was simply a massive cube, five meters on a side, though I could probably make it larger if I ever needed to assemble something that couldn’t fit into the interior dimensions. It was completely faced with steel and cradled inside stonesteel ribs, raising it up off the floor by half a meter or so. Since it was entirely handled through the dungeon inventory, there weren’t any external ports or hatches or anything for insertion or removal of material, making it a seamless, mysterious box. Again, I could alter that with [Customization], but I’d never seen a need to.

The [Mixing Bath] had approximately the same dimensions, but instead of being a metal cube it was faced with glass, set into steel framing. Considering the project I had in mind I’d altered the cube to something more like fifteen meters long and two meters wide and tall. The bath was filled with something that looked like water but I was pretty sure wasn’t, since it took Stone to make, to serve as a medium for alchemical materials. The calamite could serve that purpose, but I was hoping the supermaterial version would be even stronger. What was better was that very little catalyst was needed so the tiny amounts generated by the [Mana Diamond Anvil] wouldn’t present a problem.

I hoped, anyway.

This room at least was lit, and the two women stared at the giant hulks of equipment. Taelah gravitated to the [Mixing Bath] right away, probably because of some instinct that her alchemy Skills gave her, but Shayma went over to peer up at the [Assembler].

“I never knew you had stuff like this, Blue,” Shayma said, running her fingers over the smooth surface of the [Assembler].

“Probably because I don’t use it much. The [Mana Diamond Anvil] is new but these aren’t, and I should have shown you earlier but there just hasn’t been time. Plus it’s not like they really look that fancy.”

“Maybe not,” Shayma admitted. “They do have the feel of heavy mana though. I’m not sure how to explain it, but I can tell these are powerful.”

“I don’t know about powerful, but they will be useful.”

Taelah, meanwhile, was examining the [Mixing Bath] and apparently seeing more in it than I did. I knew it was more than just a container, but I didn’t know enough about alchemy to figure out the details.

“I’ve never seen...” She started, then stopped. “You could do any alchemical work in this. It’s far beyond my ability to appraise but so far as I can tell it will handle every reaction I know.”

So it was some sort of all-in-one alchemical apparatus, which was a lot more than a mixing bath! I wasn’t much surprised, since I was used to my overlay being unhelpful, but I did wonder how I was supposed to use the thing. Maybe I needed an alchemy skill myself, somehow.

“That’s great! I’ve got a tayantan trunk that I want to alchemical-ize. Basically, with that catalyst and this.” I raised up another display pedestal, but this one with the results of using the anvil on kinetic Source dust. The [Kinetic Mana Anecrux] shone from the little bowl that I deposited it in, and both Shayma and Taelah leaned over it curiously.

“Merciful gods!” Taelah stumbled backward, clutching her head. “That hurts just to look at with [Alchemical Insight].”

“It has very dense mana,” Shayma agreed, squinting at the small luminous speck.

“Well there’s probably about a thousand kinetic mana in that stuff,” I admitted. “Since this is for Giorn I thought it’d make for a strong enough ingredient to infuse the wood.”

“Oh, it’s strong enough all right,” Taelah said when Shayma had backed away too, rubbing her eyes. “I don’t actually know what it will do though. This is all so amazing, but I don’t have anywhere near the Skill levels to deal with it properly.”

“That’s fine. I trust you, and it’s not like we can’t try again if it doesn’t work,” I told her through Shayma. I more or less did trust her, especially compared to any random expert that might be brought in, and her lack of experience might actually be a benefit. My Skills were clearly not the same as normal ones, so a high-level Alchemist would probably know a lot that didn’t apply. If Taelah started working with my stuff early on, she might get a different sort of Skill evolution that was more appropriate. Taelah was silent for a moment after Shayma translated that over to her, then she inclined her head.

“I’ll be glad to help any way that I can.”

“I really want to get that and the catalyst into the [Mixing Bath] there along with...hang on.”

Even if I couldn’t crunch trees, I could modify them with [Customization], so it wasn’t difficult for me to create a perfectly cylindrical trunk, ten meters tall and half a meter in diameter. I flexed it to remove the bark and then sucked it into inventory and pushed it into the bath, startling both women when a massive white chunk of wood appeared inside the glass.

Not that it was just cylindrical. I had planned out how I wanted to make Giorn’s weapon, so there was a hollow core and a branching lattice for reinforcement with cultivated steel, or the next tier up now that I had more mana. I wanted to put some extra stuff into it as well, like kinetic Source gems, but those would probably be better off inside the steel core itself. The last ingredient was going to use more supermaterial, and I was pretty sure it would work but I’d only know when I finished.

“There. I’m going to try the vapor catalyst thing now.”

I triggered the [Mana Diamond Anvil], making both Taelah and Shayma look around as the muffled wave rolled over them, and then opened it up. There was a sort of muffled hiss, and the clear liquid surrounding it turned violet. The overlay actually gave me a name for the stuff: [Buffered Tesseracted Catalyst].

Well that sounded fancy. I pulled it into inventory before it had a chance to explode or something and notified the women that I was ready to try and put the stuff into the [Mixing Bath]. Only I wasn’t sure if adding the buffer and the antagonist would be a good idea.

“No, that’s added last,” Taelah said, after Shayma explained my questions. “You’ll want to add that kinetic stuff first. Along with anything else you want, though if you’re using wood I’d suggest using [Tessun Powder] to quick-age it first. That won’t need a catalyst, though you’ll want to cycle the medium.

“Man, this is exactly the sort of knowledge I need. Great, do you have any of that powder? Can you make metal salts?”

A little more discussion wound up with Taelah back at her cottage, seeing what she could do with nearly-powdered pieces of [Cultivated Steel], thousandth-unit bits, while I let the [Tessun Powder] do its work. What I really wanted Taelah to coat onto the wood was [Hyperthaumic Phase-Condensed Argentum], but I wanted to make sure it worked first.

“Oh, can I only do this once or do I have to do everything at the same time.”

“You can do it multiple times, but it’s usually a bad idea to do it more than two, three at the outside. It’s best to do it in one go, if possible.”

“We’ll go for two, then. Worst case, we’ll just have to start over.” I was more worried about knowing how it worked than wasting materials. It wasn’t like the weapon would be done in time for the battle anyway.

Shayma perched on a stool, watching Taelah work with interest. She did have [Alchemy] as a Skill, even if she’d never bothered leveling it, so just being around some alchemical work would probably give her a few points. Taelah was the one doing the work, but she had things other than alchemy on her mind.

“The elders have talked it over, and Anton’s Village is more or less decided that we’ll take Blue’s offer. We want to stay.”

“Great!” Shayma said, and I agreed with her. They were self-sufficient and appreciated what I could do for them, far more than most citizens of Meil. People had already forgotten that most of the city had been wrecked. I figured I could have them help with trading and some of my experiments I’d never gotten around to because they needed hands. Plus, with access to my special dungeon stuff, they could probably come up with unique things with their own Skills. Best of all, there weren’t that many of them.

“I was wondering about the rest of it. Being a Companion.” Taelah added, squinting down at a marble bowl as she added drops of this and that to one of the tiny bits of [Cultivated Steel]. “If you don’t mind answering a few questions.”

“Of course!” Shayma said, leaning forward in her chair. “Though to be honest Blue and I are still figuring most of it out.” Taelah nodded, pausing in her alchemy as she pursed her lips in thought.

“I don’t actually want to be a Companion,” she said at last. “I want to be a wife.”

“Wait, what?”

“What do you mean?” Shayma asked, far more intelligibly.

“I don’t need or want extra power, or an official role,” Taelah told her. “I’d be a fool not to know how useful that would be, or how needful a closer relationship with Blue is, but what I want are the things any woman would want from her husband. A stable house, a caring partner, and children.”

The phrasing stuck a chord with me. Simple, straightforward wants that they were, I was a dungeon and not a human. I was the house, in every sense. The walls and the roof, the provider, the protector. I wouldn’t say I was entirely stable, not while I was wrestling with the dictates of the dungeon-self. Not to mention the mage-kings, The Hurricane, and everyone else who wanted a piece of me.

Oddly, that clarified things. I’d never really thought about how I was going to deal with my dungeon-self other than wrestling with it whenever it annoyed me, but it wasn’t like it was going away. If I was going to take my obligation to Anton’s Village and anyone else living in my domain seriously, I’d have to to resolve it at least in part. Set aside some areas where I came to an accord with the dungeon-self, and leave the experimentation and wrestling for the heart of my territory.

No matter how I did it, I really needed to make some stable and unmoving points for myself. Maybe even start putting things out on the surface. Even if I wasn’t the usual sort of dungeon there was merit to digging in and building up, or maybe even building down. Just considering it made some aspect of me stir and start demanding floors and levels, but I wasn’t that far gone. Not that there was anything fundamentally wrong with vertical organization, but there were no points for, and maybe a lot of merit in avoiding, standard dungeon trappings. The further away from classical dungeon I was, the more likely it was that I’d be myself rather than my dungeon-self.

[Blue’s Sagacity advances to 6]

Caring partner was not as simple as it sounded either. In truth I mostly only cared about Shayma, Annit and Keri, Ansae, and Iniri, but maybe that was because I didn’t really know anyone else. I didn’t talk to them and they didn’t talk to me. But Taelah did actually talk to me, now that I thought about it, even though she already knew I couldn’t talk to her.

Children was the strange one. I’d only recently found out it was possible, but it wasn’t like I would be a father. I wasn’t a human or kin or even monster. The Skill involved was Genesis, and from everything I could tell about dungeons they were more akin to gene- and soul-editing machines than people, much less parents. That didn’t mean I was entirely averse, so long as Taelah understood what she was getting into.

“Oh,” Shayma said, startled. “That’s not what I expected.”

“I’m not an adventurer.” Taelah said, flashing a smile at Shayma’s expression. “I don’t need anything fancier than that.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Shayma admitted thoughtfully. “But you know that Blue has other Companions, right? And that I’m the only one he can talk to?”

“I’m not asking that he dote on me. Neither of us would enjoy that, I imagine. Just this would be enough.” She gestured around at the alchemy lab. “Involving me in the things I can help with. I just don’t want to be used and set aside.”

“Blue wouldn’t do that,” Shayma protested.

“I’m a little confused. Or maybe, surprised that she wants to be a wife to someone she can’t talk to and doesn’t know. Let alone have children by them. Me. Whatever, you know what I mean.”

“Marriage is all about getting to know someone,” Taelah said dryly, to Shayma’s much-condensed version of my rambling. “Everything Blue has done so far shows that he trusts me and appreciates me, even if I am only a minor herbalist. I’m not that important, I’m not going to be doing grand and world-shaking things like you are, but so long as I’m important to Blue that’s all I need.”

“She knows what she wants.” I said, as Shayma seemed too nonplussed to have a ready reply. “Actually that’s very reasonable for a Companion. I don’t want random people anyway, so I kind of like that she’s taking it seriously. That said I’d feel bad if you didn’t get to do the marriage thing first, Shayma.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure we already are,” Shayma said, reaching down to touch [Promise]. “Mom and dad might want a ceremony but that can wait until after the war’s over.” She shook her head and focused on Taelah. “Blue thinks your requests are reasonable, and appreciates the seriousness you have about it.” Taelah inclined her head.

“So he can give me children? Not monsters? I apologize if I’m being rude but it is important to me.”

“Oh, it’s absolutely important. I realized that the first time I saw the option of [Genesis] but it’s equally important she realize I can’t really act as a father. I’m kind of a giant dungeon.”

“It’s a fair question,” Shayma assured her. “Blue agrees with you about how important it is, and wants you to know he doesn’t have monsters. He can give you ordinary children, though he wants to make sure you understand it’s not possible for him to act like a father.”

“That is the sort of care I mean.” Taelah smiled, showing dimples framed by her dark brown hair. “Yes, that was one of the things I discussed with the elders. There are no shortage of foster fathers and cousins willing to lend a hand. I’m still one of Anton’s Village, after all.”

“I guess I should officially accept that. I think I ought to talk to Ansae though, since I want to bind Anton’s Village with a Bargain, and I don’t want to mess it up. Yours was awesome but we were probably lucky.” Shayma frowned briefly, probably still mad at Ansae, but nodded.

“Blue accepts, but he has some preparations to make first.” She told Taelah, who inclined her head in acceptance.

“Umm, maybe I should provide some sort of token? Oh how about a Primal nature Source?”

Thinking about it, I probably needed to make proper tokens for both Taelah and Iniri. Iniri was already my Companion, and Taelah was going to be, and I needed something to show they were mine other than a Status window. Not so much because I wanted to be possessive, but because others needed to know they were part of my circle and ought to be treated with respect. Of course, Iniri was a queen and Taelah was an elder but still. Companions were clearly a major part of my power and personal feelings aside I couldn’t let people mess with them.

“I think that’s a great idea,” Shayma agreed. “Maybe a brooch?”

“That works. I really ought to think about heraldry at some point.” Then again, Primals were unique to me, as were chrystheniums. Not to mention supermaterials. Maybe it was better to just use those rather than think about iconography.

Putting together a brooch didn’t take but a few moments. I just cast the backing from steel, added a small nature Source gem, and wrapped a core lattice gem around the edges before pushing it to Shayma. She presented it to Taelah with a grin, startling the other woman enough that she completely stopped her work.

“This is…” For once Taelah seemed off-balance. “Extremely lavish. Thank you.” She took it from Shayma, her eyes widening as the Source within bound to her, its ordinary green shifting hue only the tiniest bit as it adapted to her specific magic. “This is a Source?”

“Honestly, that’s just a quick stopgap. I’m going to be making Artifacts for her and Iniri both once I figure out what to do.”

“A Primal Source, even,” Shayma said cheerfully. “They’re Blue’s specialty, but keep in mind that is a mere token.” She held up her hand and tapped Promise. “This is the sort of gift he gives in earnest.”

“Oh.” Taelah blinked for a moment, stunned by the very idea of it, then shook herself. “That’s even more than I can imagine,” she confessed as she pinned the brooch to her apron, taking a moment to adjust it to her satisfaction. “This is more than enough for me, and if nothing else it will help me finish this,” she said, and went back to her work.

Some time later they were back by the [Mixing Bath]. Following Taelah’s suggestions I’d added in some check valves with [Fluid Handling] and [Customization], though I could tell they weren’t quite meshing with the [Mixing Bath]. Maybe some sort of upgrade would help, but then again, every other one of my crafting stations were meant for purely dungeon input.

I put the powdered, alchemically bound [Cultivated Steel] and kinetic Anecrux in using my inventory, but let Taelah do her own thing with the buffered catalyst. She had a piece of her own alchemy set, and fiddled with it, attaching it to the check valve before adding the catalyst and the antagonist. The two liquids mixed and then vanished, leaving only the vapor behind. Immediately the glass clouded and Taelah depressed a small piston, driving the vapor through the check valves into the bath.

The end result was spectacular. I’d expected maybe some fizzling, or a long wait as the catalyst did alchemy things and helped bind in the glowing Anecrux and powdered metal darkening the bath. Instead the thing practically exploded, a blinding, coruscating rainbow light flaring out from the bath along with a rumble that made the two women stumble. Taelah winced, throwing her arm over her eyes as the light show went on for ten long seconds.

When it faded, the mixing bath was dry, leaving only the tree trunk. I’d expected some sort of coating, like electroplating or vapor deposition, but the pale wood looked the same. If it weren’t for the description I would have thought nothing had changed, but considering the new name I was pretty sure the component had been integrated on a more fundamental level.

[Kinetic-Steel Anecrux Wood Trunk]

So that was step one. I wasn’t anywhere near done with it, especially since I wanted to do another round with argentum, but it was a start and proof it’d work like I wanted. Unfortunately, I’d need more of that buffer stuff for Taelah since all that work hadn’t netted me any new skills or features to actually work with the [Tesseract Catalyst] vapor, but there wasn’t a huge rush. It’d take me a while to make enough argentum anyway.

“Oooh, my head.” Taelah said, rubbing at her temples while she squinted at the log lying in the now-dry bath. “I think I gained a level or two just from that.” A glance at her Status showed that she actually had leveled. Her entry said [Level 20] (1 level pending), which reminded me that according to Shayma, most people didn’t actually level up until they’d time to rest and sleep. My instantaneous leveling of her when she was at my core was something of an anomaly.

“She did gain a level actually!”

“He does all kinds of absurd things,” Shayma laughed, reaching out to help steady her. “Plus he says you gained a level.”

“How does he even know that?” Taelah replied, shaking her head.

“Welcome to life with Blue.”