201, 2/2

Located down one of the many hallways past the atrium in the center of the house, the entrance to the Benevolence research tower was one of House Benevolence’s more active areas. A good eleven people were already present, this early in the morning, including Tasar, who appeared in a flicker of black-green magic just down the way.

“Good morning,” Tasar said, walking closer.

“Morning,” Erick said, smiling—

Ah. A while ago, Erick had promised Tasar that he would tell her how to make a [Familiar] with their own mana pool. Now that he knew how that actually worked, he wondered if Tasar would actually want to know. Erick had made both Ophiel and Yggdrasil through rituals, knowing and planning on the fact that both would eventually become real. Since they would ‘eventually become real’, they had a theoretical mana pool waiting for them in the future, and so, Erick had Established that they could access that future mana right now.

Mana was rather full of possibilities like that.

But Erick doubted that Tasar would actually want to make something that she knew would become real.

Back when Erick had told the royalty of Stratagold that he was immortal, Tasar had taken Erick aside and tried to give him some good advice about his [Familiar]s, and Ophiel in particular. Now that he was immortal, he would watch Ophiel grow into a real person, and chances were that Ophiel would be both the first and the last of his kind, and that he would be mortal. [Familiar]s rarely turned into real, thriving species. Eventually, Erick would lose a child that he had watched grow into a very, very old man, and there was nothing that he could do to stop that.

Tasar had done that exact thing once before. Once was more than enough. Never again would she make a summon that would become a real person.

But now, Erick had [Reincarnation], so even if Ophiel’s form didn’t function long term, he had a solution to that problem, too.

—still smiling, still greeting Tasar, Erick asked, “Do you want to learn how to make a summon that has their own mana, Tasar?”

Tasar’s eyes went wide, and yes, she did.

But Erick continued, “Thanks to Phagar I think I know why my summons have mana.” His smile waned, and he said, “If you want to know, I can tell you and then help you make one yourself, but it will be difficult for you. It’s nothing untoward, but it is a choice; one that I know you have already said no to.”

Tasar’s sudden joy gutted like a fire turned to ice. Eventually, she thawed a little, deciding, “I would like to know the choices, either way.”

“We’ll talk later.”

Tasar gave a small nod. Behind Erick, Kiri’s eyeridges were high on her head. She wanted to know what was going on. He would tell her, too; probably both of them together, actually. Teressa had a mild curiosity, but she could take or leave a whole conversation about [Familiar]s and not really care one way or the other.

Erick turned back to the research tower.

Beyond a large archway made of angular, Art Deco-like lightning reliefs, lay what was essentially a bunch of individual laboratories as one would encounter in any proper Mage Guild the world over; spaces for people to experiment with small scale magics. The main room ahead was a large-ish gathering space, like a courtyard with multiple levels ringing an open center. On those levels were bunches of doors leading off to other areas. Some rooms behind those doors were larger than others. Some doors led to library rooms and office spaces, though there wasn’t much in any of those right now. The whole tower had an empty sort of feeling to it, much like the rest of House Benevolence, even though there were people here and working hard already.

A different tower held the Office of Magic. Over there was where Aisha held all the experiments with turning iron into a viable magical metal. Tasar had helped a bit with that, since she was the one who had invented [Condense Oxygen] and helped turn that into a cure for Wrought Rot, but there was a long way to go to solving that problem, and the Gemslicers, the ones who actually made the cure for Wrought Rot, were not talking to Erick.

But all that magical iron stuff was for another day.

Today was a day of working on Benevolence, and others were already here.

As soon as Erick stepped into this space one of the doors on the second floor swung open. Aisha stood on the other side, along with three others.

With an excited, happy tone, Aisha gripped the railing and called out, “Are you finally coming to experiment?”

“I am!” Erick walked forward, saying, “I’m finally out of pressing crises, though there are still longer term crises, of course.”

Aisha smiled. “Of course! Come on up! We might have finally gotten the elemental condenser truly work—”

A small explosion popped behind Aisha, briefly backlighting her and the other three with multicolor lightning. As the lightning dissipated, a riot of plant life sprawled out of the room like the sudden appearance of a jungle made of vines and ferns and bamboo.

Erick’s heart briefly beat hard, but the feeling passed. Nothing had happened.

Just a minor Benevolence explosion.

Aisha groaned in disappointment. Her employees had various other disappointed looks upon their faces. From inside the room, Erick heard someone yell about how it was all working just fine. As Erick walked forward, another person yelled back about how it obviously wasn’t fine, you fucking fairy fucker, and this was probably all a plot by Ar’Cosmos to fuck over everything they were trying to make.

Aisha scowled at that voice, yelling back, “We wouldn’t even have the elemental condenser if it weren’t for them!”

Someone inside complained that they still didn’t have the condenser, because Ar’Cosmos was fucking it all up!

Erick sighed as he walked up the stairs. Aisha was already inside, clearing away plants with [Blight], radiating blackening magic into the air and dissolving every single plant in the area. Erick had seen this explosive outcome happen five times already, and this sixth time was no different. Luckily, [Blight] didn’t affect eternal stonewood, so this spell was the best way to get rid of unwanted plant growth. As Erick stepped into sight of the room, he watched as Aisha began flowing [Cleanse] out into the space, evaporating brown and black gunk into so much thick air.

As the goop evaporated it revealed two loudly yelling people standing next to the single table in the room. Erick ignored the small fight for Aisha was already on it, separating the iron wrought human man from the red-skinned orcol man; Raim and Clavog, from Stratagold and Ar’Cosmos respectively. They had been the arguing pair from before. They always argued, because both of them were very good at their fields of elemental magical study, but they had been raised in very different environments. Clavog knew all about how magic was supposed to work. Raim knew all about how magic actually worked.

Or at least that was their usual refrain.

On the table was the source of their arguments and their current project; an elemental condenser. It was a series of multicolor-metal parallel tubes going up and down, looking a little bit like a pipe organ, or a bunch of meter-long crayons in a bundle. Those metal pipes led to a collection plate in the base of the machine. The inside of every single pipe, each made of a different magical metal, were fully inscribed with runes.

The machine drew in air, filtered mana inside that air, and condensed that mana into a solid crystal atop the collection plate. And it worked fine inside Ar’Cosmos. Inside that fairy land, this machine was how Fairy Moon had created a mana crystal, which she then had turned into a counting crystal so Erick could monitor his Stat growth when he was first accreting.

But it did not work well inside this Script-filled normal space.

It did not work well.

Erick asked, “Still not working well?” He mana sensed over to the main condenser room, then came back, saying, “The others seem to be working… Minimally.”

Aisha said, “The others are still condensing what they are able to condense, but—”

Raim and Clavog finally realized that Erick was in the room with them.

Clavog instantly said, “This rusting shite tried turning up the volume!”

Raim rounded Clavog, saying, “It should have worked, dragon fucker!”

Erick stared at the offenders, saying, “Switch the machine back to minimal power, and do it right.”

Clavog pulled back his anger, trying to stuff it away into a void as he breathed long and slow. And then he resumed breathing normally. Raim did much the same.

Clavog turned to Raim, saying, “We’ll go slower.”

Raim scowled, then realized he was scowling and tried to shut that off. Through gritted teeth, he mumbled, “Slower, then.”

“Anyway!” Erick released his own displeasure as best he could and turned to Aisha, saying, “So yes. I have some time today to see how all this Benevolence research is going—” He turned back toward the elemental condenser, adding, “—and it seems to have hit a snag?”

Aisha walked forward, saying, “The main problem we’re having is the same problem we’ve always had with working new elements; there just isn’t enough of Benevolence to go around.”

Now that was a bit disturbing, actually.

And for multiple reasons.

Erick frowned a little, saying, “Even considering my mana production is still mostly in the Script, I’m always casting magic, and the Gates are right there, doing the same. I’ve been putting Benevolence-flavored mana into the manasphere for two months now and we’re at the epicenter of that output. Hullbreaker was putting out measurable amounts of Elemental Pirate all across the entire Letri Ocean after only 6 months.” He studied the elemental condenser, saying, “This thing should be able to condense more than it has.”

Raim exclaimed, “Exactly! That’s why I tried to turn it up!”

Clavog frowned at the smaller man.

Erick added, “But it obviously can’t. So why?”

Clavog furrowed his brows, slightly miffed, as he said, “Because this machine does not work well outside of Ar’Cosmos, as I have said multiple times to everyone—” He cut himself off. He continued, “That it is working at all means that there is Elemental Benevolence to be had, but— Even with the Hullbreaker example, we had thousands of these machines all over the Letri ocean looking for him. Any variations in production at all gave us a good idea of where to find the Wizard, but those machines were still attuned to minimal output. The machine cannot be improved, for the Script ties it down and prevents it from working properly!”

The elemental condenser was beyond Erick’s skill, but he hadn’t really tried to improve upon the design, either. He had no time for such a thing, and besides, his people here were already on the job. They had even managed to make some magic out of Benevolence.

Every single person in this room had made at least one Benevolence spell in the past month, since Erick had gotten House Benevolence up and running. Some of them had even managed to make small enchantments using those spells. A wand of [Benevolence Jolt]. A rod of [Benevolence Bomb]. A [Detect Benevolence] pair of goggles. Erick had copies of those spells from his subjects, and he had even found time to make versions of his own. There were obvious problems, though, because the spells other people made were very different from Erick’s own versions.

Whatever Erick was doing with Benevolence was so much further from what other people were doing with Benevolence, that when the facts of created spells were laid out in little blue boxes it was easy to see which ones belonged to Erick, and which ones had been made by everyone else. Even leaving the mana costs aside, that part of ‘<Effect multiplies when acting on behalf of [][][][][][][][][].>’ was only present in Erick’s own magic.

Only one person had managed to get that second half of the ‘benevolence descriptor’ inside her spell box. That honor went to Aisha, but only because Erick had been working with her at the time to get her to make the spell. When Erick wasn’t present, no one else had managed to make the same magic.

And thus, the Benevolence research tower went back to square one, to reevaluate everything and see where they could improve their understanding of Benevolence.

Or maybe get a shortcut.

So, people talked to people.

Eventually, Mox and Aisha and Burhendurur spoke of old fights, and old Wizards, and Mox asked how Ar’Cosmos had managed to find Hullbreaker almost always before they had. That fact was one of her lingering questions about that time, and two days later Burhendurur, after talking with Erick, decided to let that secret out of the bag.

That conversation had led to this elemental condenser being here, today. This thing was supposed to be able to condense a particular element out of the air, making ‘essence chips’ of the chosen element, which could then be used to grant oneself the elemental body of the chosen element, or allow oneself to cast magic with those elements. And so, these chips were how anyone could ‘be in the room with Erick’ whenever they needed. Eventually, if production increased, a proper enchanter might be able to take those chips and make a suit of elemental armor out of them, allowing someone to actually gain that Elemental Body for themselves. With that Elemental Body in hand, they could then experiment with Benevolence to their heart’s content.

(Or, they could go the [Polymorph] route, and eat all those chips. This necessitated the creation of a benevolence slime, though, so that the user of that Familiar Form could actually eat and digest those chips, but the Benevolence dungeon was still on the drawing boards.)

There were problems with this condenser plan, though. Elemental condensers worked great in Ar’Cosmos. People there regularly used these machines in order to gather essence without going through the problems of making a dungeon and gathering essence through harvesting slimes. These essence condensers saved a lot of space in that way.

But they barely worked on Veird.

But, importantly, they did work! A little.

And so they tried using these machines. It was not working well. The volume produced by the machine was barely worth noting. A single chip of pure Benevolence a day, about the size of a gold coin, was about the same amount of Light Essence produced by a single light slime over its maturation cycle of 50 days.

They had about 10 of these machines working in the other rooms and they were getting a measurable amount of Benevolence Essence, but it had not been enough. A dungeon, working properly, would get the user the proper Elemental Body within a single day of slime production. So far, with their meager production, these people had made small, imperfect enchantments and small, imperfect spellwork.

It wasn’t enough.

Erick decided he would go visit the dungeon after this meeting, or however long this took, and try to make a Benevolence version of his [Kaleidoscopic Radiance]. It would probably be the only way to actually get that dungeon up and running, and to really give House Benevolence true access to its namesake.

Yes. That is what he would do later.

For now, he turned his thoughts back to the moment.

Ashia said, “This is the 15th confirmation in a long line of confirmations that undirected Benevolence causes plant growth, which is pretty great!” She glared at the two men who had been arguing, “That could have turned out very badly if your anger had caused that Benevolence to snap black. We still don’t know what actually causes that to happen.”

Raim shook his head, not believing Aisha’s warning. “It doesn’t snap black unless in the presence of an actual hostile force.”

Or if Erick decided it should, but he did not say that.

Clavog rolled his eyes, saying, “And you’re claiming not to be hostile! Preposterous!”

Erick interrupted the impending argument, saying, “Anyway! How are the prognostication efforts going?”

The iron man and the red orcol went silent.

Aisha said, “The talismans we’ve been able to make out of Benevolence Essence still allow me to glimpse the wall of problems coming in a hundred years, but not much more than that.”

Erick still hadn’t shown her inside his Gate Space yet, but then and there, he decided he would change that today, too.

Erick nodded, then began, “So we’re still at a bottleneck for actual Elemental Benevolence, and while we broadly know the larger applications, we still don’t know exactly what it does in smaller scenarios. So pick two people, Aisha, and we’re going into the Gate Space right now. You can see what the wall looks like for yourself.”

Aisha’s eyes went wide, and she wasn’t the only one. Instantly, everyone in the room was on an anticipatory edge. They all desperately wanted what Erick had just offered, but that just wasn’t going to happen. This was the first time he was actually offering to show them that space. Eventually, his Gate Space would be public access, for that was how he had constructed it to be, but not right now. Not until he knew the vulnerabilities of his Gate Space.

There was no way to really find that out, though, without inviting some people inside, and today was the day to invite some people inside.

Erick looked to Teressa, Kiri, and Tasar, saying, “And you’re all coming, too.”

Teressa seemed to relax with a quiet approval. She was ready to see the wall, too. Kiri was ready as well; Erick had not done much magic work with her in the last two months, and she absolutely wanted to see the Gate Space. He probably could have shown both of them the Gate Space long before now, but there just hadn’t been time. And now, there was time.

Tasar was the only real odd woman out, who was included just because she was here, but Erick felt he could trust her with this vulnerability.

He was pretty sure he could trust every single person in this room.

But only two of Aisha’s employees could join them.

Aisha made some rapid decisions, saying, “Raim. Clavog. Are you ready?”

The previously-fighting men were very ready.

Erick opened a [Gate] to the side of the room. Instead of sky or land or water appearing beyond the ring of lightning, it was a world of iridescent white, where a floating platform of white stone held a fountain burbling in the center, and a fractionally-sized Yggdrasil grew in the distance. A gentle breeze flowed out from the Gate Space and the elemental condenser, which had been reset to its lowest possible setting, began to chime and echo with the sound of Benevolence. Elemental Benevolence began to gather on the collection plate like growing bundles of sparks slowly settling down into a solid mass. Everyone in the room noticed this, of course, for the condenser chimed and tinkled as it worked.

But Erick was not leaving his Gate Space open and thus vulnerable to others while he wasn’t directly present. So he led the way into Benevolence and his people followed, some excited, some wary.

The Gate Space had changed a lot since its creation, but only in matters of size.

The floating white platform was the same columnar basalt design as before, except now it was a hundred meters across and some of the hexagonal stones had been replaced with dirt. Ferns and vines and sometimes small mushrooms grew from those loamy spaces, and especially where the fountain overflowed, pouring water into a channel in the platform, to flow out into space, to attach to Yggdrasil in the distance.

Yggdrasil looked like himself, but much smaller.

That fountain in the center was about twice as large as before. The outer rim was several meters in diameter, supporting a pool of water a good three meters deep. The stones that rose in the center supported a minor waterfall that fell into that pool, while a gentle pyre held in the air above that waterfall. That warm fiery space was shaped like the [Renew] rune, and the same runic design repeated everywhere inside the space, if one looked close enough.

Everyone was looking very closely at everything they could.

He was sure that soon enough, someone would recognize the spark of darkness that held in the very center of the land, inside the base of the waterfall. To Erick, it looked like an abyss and an open window into a certain dragon’s domain. That Dark dragon might actually gaze back, if he felt like it, but Erick didn’t look too closely, and Melemizargo was wherever he wanted to be, anyway.

Erick turned outward, to gaze upon the sky, away from Yggdrasil.

“Feels like the sky is about a kilometer away, or maybe only 850 meters.” Erick said, “It’s still growing at a steady rate. I have no idea why you can’t materialize more Benevolence outside.” And before Raim or Clavog actually spoke and suggested he leave a [Gate] open inside the condensing room, Erick added, “And I’m not leaving an opening to my Gate Space open when I’m not around. Speaking of which. Now that you are all inside—” With a flick of intent, Erick closed the opening. “—You can’t see the sky with the [Gate] open.”

His people briefly lost composure as he closed the [Gate], and they all realized that they were trapped in here, but then they all realized in their own, quick ways, that Erick wasn’t going to harm them. Kiri and Teressa recovered the quickest. Tasar and Aisha were a bit slower, but fast enough. Raim and Clavog didn’t recover until the sky started to shift. A gentle sound of distant thunder rumbled across the Gate Space as a flicker of brighter lightning created shadows upon the endless horizon.

Not a single person said a word as they all stared at the beyond.

Lightning flashed, and began to do more than that.

What appeared out of the heavens was exactly the same as the last time Erick had looked, only a few days ago. Lightning tangled upon itself and produced at least 47 dark spots that appeared in the distance. Some of those spots moved and joined with others, before coming back apart to become their own separate thing, so there might have been more than that, or maybe a few less. It had taken Erick a good hour of observation to actually understand that there were at least 47 problems on the horizon, so he doubted that anyone here was actually getting the full numerically-defined experience that he had, but that was fine.

Erick had no idea what any of the tangles actually meant, except for the one that was Bright Smile. Contrary to his first impression of that Carnage Dragon, Erick no longer believed that she was a danger to everyone, or at least not a conventional danger. It was quite realistic to assume that Bright Smile would go on to conquer the Fairy World and raise everyone under her ideals, and that could be a problem…

But that was a problem for later.

“As you can see,” Erick began explaining, “The web of tangles is all rather distant, and if you really look, you can see that almost all of them happen around the hundred year mark. It’s like a spider web that is deep at a specific layer, and not thick anywhere else. But if you look over there—” Erick pointed to a closer tangle. “—That one is about the only tangle that is closer than the hundred year wall. I’d estimate that one at 40 years out, but it’s moved deeper and shallower several times.

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“None of these tangles are set. All of them move.

“In the beginning, Patriarch Xangu and the Red Dot Dragon were right up in front, almost at the very edge of the platform. Those were immediate problems. Those did not move; they just got closer and more solid, while that hundred year wall shifts every time I look at it.” Erick said, “I’m just guessing that that is a hundred years away, by the way, because that is the thing that makes the most sense. But it could be some other confluence. Whatever the case, it’s rather distant, and we’ll all still be around to fix it when it does happen.” Erick finished with, “So take a look around and do whatever you have to do for a while. Maybe half an hour?”

His people looked away from him, and focused on the sky.

Aisha stared, her eyes wide and flickering with iridescent magic of her own. Teressa stared at the sky, too, her eyes filled with grey light. Both of them were doing some sort of [Future Sight] or possibly [Witness]. Both of them were much more capable with prognostication than Erick, too, so maybe they would see more than he had seen.

Clavog and Raim began talking in small voices to each other, their previous anger completely forgotten as they tried to understand everything else around them. They spoke of the small [Renew] runes in the stone underfoot, and ringing the fountain, and in the paired mushrooms that grew from the soil like curving horns to barely touch at the tips, but with one tip enfolding the other. The mushrooms themselves grew in the shape of [Renew]. This land was weird. Much weirder than Ar’Cosmos.

And so, Erick let them explore.

Kiri and Tasar’s enthusiasm faded after a few minutes, their expressions both going softer, and more worrisome. Both of them looked a little lost.

Erick would get to Tasar soon enough, but first he went to Kiri, asking, “What’s up? What are you feeling?”

Kiri startled at Erick’s voice, and then she calmed. She was on the edge of a choice which had been building for a while now, and though she didn’t know how to best say it, she decided to simply get on with it. “I want to learn Spatial Magics.”

Erick’s heart had briefly pumped hard as he suddenly worried about what Kiri could possibly want, and why it had been such a difficulty for her to tell him until now, but Spatial Magics? That was a lot better than his worst possible fears!

Tasar had a different reaction, though. She whipped her head around to stare at Kiri, and then she glanced to Erick.

Erick was already smiling. “Of course—” And then he realized the depth of what Kiri was asking. “I mean… Spatial Magic is dangerous, but we’re past the initial deals I made with the Wayfarer’s Guild to not let anyone else know what they told me, and you have Sunny to brute force a lot of that experimentation.” Erick smiled again, saying, “I was expecting to eventually tell you all about all that stuff, so of course! Yes.”

“And then I want to walk the Worldly Path with you at the end of it.”

Tasar gasped.

Erick was only capable of uttering a rather unbalanced, “Uh?”

“Not for years more.” Kiri said, “But eventually.”

Erick recovered. “I mean. Yes— You know what that entails.”

“I can barely guess at everything that it entails…” Kiri turned to face the sky of lightning. “But I need to do more than I am—” She stopped speaking as she suddenly realized that they weren’t alone here in Erick’s Gate Space, and that they never were. Sheepishly, she whispered, “Talk later?”

Erick nodded. And then he prepared to hear Tasar’s naysaying.

Tasar stated, “I believe it would be a bad idea to allow anyone else to walk the Worldly Path at this moment in time.”

Erick turned to her. “I agree, and I am glad that Kiri has said that she would wait a few years. Hopefully this delay coincides with my own desire to not do too many things all at once.” Erick looked to Kiri.

Kiri nodded her head a little. “Yes. I can wait… But I want to do more than I am…” Her voice trailed off.

She left a lot unsaid. Like how she was bored, as Jane and Sitnakov had been bored. She was still young and powerful and needed to do something useful and Erick wasn’t giving her nearly enough to do, or spending nearly enough time teaching her lately. At the same time, she knew Erick had been busy, and that this was good work being done here, so she didn’t complain too loudly at all. In fact, this much right here was the most she had said on the subject in the last two months since they moved to Candlepoint.

“I want you to work with Mox to start expanding the lakeside to about a hundred kilometers out from the actual lake. I want to start bringing the real forest back to the crystal forest, and it’s time to start doing that.” Erick asked, “What do you say?”

Kiri stammered, “Ye— Yes! Of course!”

“Good. And also…” Erick turned back to Tasar. “Could you teach Kiri all there is to know of Spatial Magic? In return, I will tell you how to make a [Familiar] that has their own mana, and if you cannot do it on your own, I will do the same Wizardry I did for Kiri and Sizzi, for you.”

Tasar stood a bit straighter. “Uh.”

Kiri was barely able to hide her joy under a veneer of professionalism.

Tasar’s thoughts solidified. She looked at Erick, her black and green metal eyes narrowed slightly. “So it was Wizardry?”

“Unintentional, and, as I said before, you probably won’t like what actually happened there.” Erick shrugged. “It’s nothing untoward, but you, personally, will have a problem with it.”

“… I’ll do it.” Tasar said, “If you allow me to walk the full Worldly Path with Miss Flamecrash when she decides to actually walk it.” She looked to Kiri. “Which won’t be for at least ten years at the absolute earliest.”