Chapter 053 - Assistant

Within the relative quiet of her lab that had once been the processing room for the precinct, Anna stood with her hands on her hips. Two windows hovering in front of her face as she reviewed the two quests that had ostensibly consumed her life over the past week. Her eyes flicked from one window to the other, her lips thinning as she made certain she understood exactly what the expectations were and made sure she wasn’t missing anything.

Grow - Part 2 (Variable Difficulty)

You have survived the trials within a deadly dungeon and come out not only alive but with help that could be the difference between life and death. Time continues to march on towards the inevitable end of the Integration and the Tutorial. You have an opportunity before you, though. A unique confluence of circumstances has given you the chance to acquire a profession before the usual required level.

All things change, however, and the Integration continues. Eventually this region will be reshuffled and your position moved once again. Unlock your profession and get it to level five before that happens to complete this quest. Should you also refine two more class levels during that time you will receive bonus rewards. 

If you fail you will receive no further Main Quests.

You have refined two additional class levels, task complete.

Time Remaining: 7 Days, 20 hours, 33 minutes.

Rewards: 1 Copper Coin, Equipment Upgrade Token (Variable)
Bonus Reward: Skill or Ability Token (Variable)

Her lips curled upward and she cast her gaze over to the second window, looking it over as well.

New Quest Alert!

Profession: Engraver

The Engraving Profession is the pursuit of utilizing magical knowledge to apply new effects to physical objects and create tools and equipment capable of providing convenience to the user. You have started the road towards becoming an engraver and met some of the prerequisites. Continue your path to unlock the profession.

Acquire the Engraving skill (1/1)
Reach the Low grade of the Engraving skill (1/1)
Acquire the Deconstruction skill (0/1)
Reach the Low grade of the Deconstruction skill (0/1)
Know at least 5 Basic spells (4/5)
Craft at least 10 functional reusable Engravings (5/10)
Create a simple multi-step engraving and apply it to an object (1/1)

Reward: Engraving Profession Unlocked

She closed the two windows and moved over to her desk, planting her hands on either side of the sheet of paper that Catherine had provided for her. She reviewed it carefully, examining the features of the diagram. The spellform wasn’t overly complicated, barely a little more complicated than the basic spells she already knew. At first glance it seemed simple, but every portion of the spell had been carefully positioned in just the right way to maximize its efficacy.

She snatched up a piece of paper and glanced over her shoulder as the sound of movement upstairs briefly caught her attention. She hadn’t had time to really work since they’d invited the rescued slaves into the precinct, besides her hasty construction of the coolant device for the bed to save old man Harkin. Now, with the operations board set up and Catherine with some idea of what each of them was capable of, she had begun divvying up work and setting them loose to turn the building into a home… and prepare for the future.

Anna turned back to the diagram she was working on and snatched up a pencil, drawing the lines and working through the spellforms structure in her own head. It wasn’t good enough just to copy it, after all, she had to understand what she was drawing and why things were the way they were. Two attempts ended in duds and curses, she crumpled up the paper and tossed it over her shoulder each time before snatching up another. Her eyes fixed on her work. “Fuckin.. Is that not it? Why is this here?” she he muttered irritably.

She turned towards the diagram again and squinted at it, taking a step around it and trying to look at it from a different angle. The equation made sense as a whole but the different parts felt like they fit together flimsily. She scowled a little and scratched her head. “I mean I get it, but my gut tells me this is wrong, is that why I’m not getting the spell? Did she mess up?” Anna mumbled and leaned back in her seat. The rune here is supposed to maintain the spell during its duration. This one here is supposed to draw in ambient mana as the spell runs its course and breaks down. 

She ran some numbers in her head. Calculations bouncing around along with runes and the complex rules of Arcane magic. She ran her fingers through her messy hair and crossed her arms. “...but why are they separate?” She asked no one in particular and pursed her lips, writing out an experimental formula. She slid the maintenance and mana draw runes in next to one another with a bracket between them. Like a division symbol. But in the case of arcane magic, it's a ‘pairing’ symbol.

She swept her eyes over the rest of the spellform and groaned. “But that means the rest is all a mess… ugh!” She groaned and rubbed her temples before getting back to work.

It took another hour of cursing and throwing crumpled papers before it finally happened. Just as she was finishing the last stroke of her pencil on the latest variation of the diagram, a window appeared.

New Spell Acquired!

Stable Magelight (Mortal-Rare-Base)
You create a small, permanent source of light at a designated location within one hundred feet of your person and within your line of sight. While this spell requires a larger amount of mana to initially cast, it requires very little ambient mana to maintain. This light will persist until it is dismissed.

Quest Update!

Know at least 5 Basic spells (5/5)

Anna let out a whoop, throwing her fists into the air and hopping up off her chair. “Yes!” she shouted. Not ‘pathetic’ magelight. Not ‘lesser’ magelight. Not even ‘magelight’. Stable Magelight. A better version than what Catherine had provided her. She wasn’t sure if it was Catherine’s goal for her to get this result or not, but she couldn’t have done it without the logic that had been hammered into her by her mother. She grinned and cast the spell, a ball of light appearing over her palm about the size of a softball. It let out a steady, brilliant glow that was fairly blinding up close, especially after sitting in not-so-great illumination of a glowstone for so long.

She winced and quickly dismissed the spell, rubbing her eyes. “Ow…” she grumbled, wiping a tear and laughing. “Shit that was bright.”

She glanced around once, making extra sure she wasn’t being observed before she held her hand down to her hip then twirled, pointing up at the ceiling where the long-dark fluorescent lightbulb hung. “Pow!” With a flicker a new magelight formed on the ceiling and cast the entire room in a steady, clean, colorless glow. She snatched the old glowstone up and grinned even more widely. Now that I can cast it…

She set out a small pile of engraving plates and grabbed another notebook to sketch out the engraving ahead of time. Time to make it even better.

She was about to start when footsteps came thumping down the stairs and she looked up with a frown. Her eyes landed on Korat, the young orc who was Beval’s friend. The orc rubbed his neck awkwardly, squinting against the bright light before dipping into a stiff bow when he met her eyes. “M-my lady,” he grunted. “Your Knight sent me to come assist you.”

She narrowed her eyes a bit. “Aren’t you a blacksmith or something?”

He stiffened, still in his bow. “...I was training to be one, my lady.”

She pursed her lips and shot a look towards the stairs as if willing Catherine to come down and explain herself. Of course she fuckin’ wouldn’t though, she’d expect Anna to just adapt to the situation and figure out the value all on her own. She huffed out a breath and turned away, waving her hand. “This is my workshop, have a look around, try not to touch anything. I’m busy making lights for the precinct. You can stand around and watch but don’t interrupt.”

She heard him swallow hard. “U-understood,” the literally olive-skinned young man said, scratching his head. “You’re really an engraver, then?”

She paused and stared at the wall, Interrupting… “Not yet, I’m working on my profession quest right now, actually,” she said with a small amount of bite to get her point across. She turned and looked at him. “Why?”

“You don’t have a vessel,” he said glancing around. “I’ve been in an engraver’s workshop once. They all have these big vessels.”

Anna chewed her lip and squinted at him before reaching for her textbook. She flipped to the index and then flipped to the relevant page. A vessel is a container for essence. The Deconstruction ability breaks down crafted items and extracts the essence within. This essence may be stored in a vessel for easier use rather than being kept within the engraver. She pursed her lips and looked up at him again, her fingers brushing over the picture in the book. “...you think you can make me one?” She asked.

He brightened. “Yes! I can make the body of it, certainly. I know what they look like. I think you have to do something special to it as well, though. There’s plenty of things in this building I could repurpose into parts for it.”

She tapped the page. “Yeah, I’ve got the vessel engraving right here,” she said and looked around the room, noting the corner where she’d been piling up crumbled scribbles over the past week or so. “Get on it and put it there. Take what you need, tell Catherine it’s an order.”

He nodded eagerly and hurried back up the stairs. Her lip twitched. Maybe having a little assistant won’t be a bad thing. I can have him bring me tools or something while I’m working, she thought with a shrug and got back to work.

The plates weren’t overly complicated to make once she got the diagram drawn out the way she wanted. A little bit of presence, some carefully applied mana running through her and a brief break between each plate and after about six hours she had a stack of around ten of them. She’d had a few failures, but the number of flubs was starting to go down as her experience grew. The results spoke for themselves.

Stabilized Illumination Plate (Mortal-Rare) x10
This metal token has been engraved with a simple glyph emulating a skillfully crafted illumination spell. Once activated, the plate will briefly draw a large amount of mana before stabilizing and producing a steady, bright illumination that can fill a medium-sized room. Afterwards it will continue to draw a very small amount of mana from its surroundings, maintaining the illumination. This enchantment must be physically attached to a surface to activate. This plate can be removed and reattached to a new surface for additional mana.

And the good times kept rolling.

Quest Update!

Craft at least 10 functional reusable Engravings (10/10)

Anna licked her lips and spread them out like cards in front of her. This was probably the most well crafted thing she’d made so far. While it wasn’t as complicated as the heater or the cooling device, it was clean, precision work. It also meant that she was just a few steps away from acquiring her profession. The deconstruction skill needed to be acquired next. Her hyper-focus was interrupted, though, as a low thunk and thud drew her attention back to the stairs where Korat was stumbling down, carefully hauling what looked like a massive milk jug made out of torn, reshaped, and fixed together pieces of file cabinets and metal desks.

She narrowed her eyes. “...did you weld those together?” She asked incredulously as he hauled the six foot tall jug over to the corner.

“Yes, my lady,” he grunted and set it down at the indicated spot after kicking some of her wadded up papers out of the way. She’d forgotten to clean them up for him. “I have a metalworking ability that can let me fuse mundane metals. It’s rather mana intensive though. I haven’t used it in a long time so it took me a bit longer to make this than I would have liked”

She clicked her tongue and raised an eyebrow in approval. “Huh, not a bad ability to have.”

He nodded and stepped back, eyeing his work. “It’s not great, mediocre grade crafting. But it will work as a vessel for you.”

She walked over and put a hand on it.

Unattuned Engravers Vessel (Mortal-Flawed)
This metal vessel has been prepared for an Engraver to store essence within. Once attuned, the vessel will seal and be able to store up to 500 essence safely. It has a capacity of 2000.

She couldn’t help but appreciate the handiwork despite the obvious flaws with it. She’d have to be careful to not overfill it once she got the deconstruction skill. Speaking of which. That was her next step. She pulled back from the vessel and nodded with approval. “Good work, Korat,” she grunted and glanced his way. Part of her really hated having the idea of someone hanging around while she worked, but if she thought about it, there wasn’t a whole lot of work he could do right now besides help slap metal shit together. She saw the hope in his eyes. He, just like the others, wanted to get those contributions next to his name.

She turned back to her desk and opened her textbook, flipping to the chapter on the Deconstruction ability, how to get it, and how to use it properly. Her fingers lingered over the first line and she glanced back at him. “...grab me some of those scrap weapons and items from that pile over there,” she said with a jerk of her chin. “I’ll also need some kind of cloth or towel to set them on while I work.”

He brightened, nodded, and hurried back up the stairs.

She watched him go as another set of footsteps descended. She heard a small murmured exchange of words and pursed her lips. Catherine poked her head into the room a moment later with that infuriatingly knowing smile on her face. Anna turned away. “Shut up, he’s useful,” she grunted and glared at her paper, a bit of heat rising up the back of her neck. She tapped her finger on the desk a few times and turned back to her. “You are too. Thank you,” she grumbled and held out the pile of plates she’d made. “Now unless you need something, take these and have them set up. I have work to do.”

Catherine approached, took the plates, and inclined her head. “Right away.”