(12) Functionality Restored!

Nephthys descended the staircase, a spiraled contraption that she thought looked nice in-game but was reconsidering as she walked it. It was marble, just like the rest of the vault, and each step had a golden edge, both to indicate the next step and to decorate it.

Marble, at least, this pure white marble, was rare and expensive during the Prelude days. The only quarries that Nephthys was aware of were in the crater rim, the portion far out into the sea to the east. Those were actually the world boundaries in the Ashreach expansion, and it was a long trip.

Flying there was dangerous because various airborne monsters roosted in those peaks, not to mention that long-range flight was a late-game ability. Sailing there was even less advisable. Players could craft sea-worthy vessels, but they were far from defensible against flyers, and the random sea encounters were even more perilous.

Many thought the devs introduced sea travel exclusively to mess with players, since many sea creatures were functionally unkillable by players low enough to rely on boats. By the time one could reliably kill them, flying was likely accessible as well, making it moot.

The white marble walls began to shift as she traveled down the stairs, becoming streaked with crimson veins that glowed. This marble was unique to Ashreach, called bloodvein marble. It was just marble, with crashglass streaks throughout, but the deep red, ominous glow lent it a sort of vampiric atmosphere.

Stepping into the second level of the vault, Nephthys smiled fondly. Bookshelves and cases lined the circular room, the collection likely more impressive than many libraries. Nephthys was a collector, and that meant she liked to have one of everything. It did not matter whether it was rare resources, powerful weapons and armor, or lore books. She wanted at least one.

The result was this huge, multistoried room—explaining the long descent from the floor above—filled to the brim with every piece of written text obtainable in Prelude. Racks and racks of scrolls stood next to bookshelves, stands with torn bits of parchment or vellum, and even a section covered with enchanted slates. These were particularly important, as they were the Praxic remnants that taught players spells.

Though the walls were packed, the floor was open and spacious, with comfortable chairs and side tables strategically placed throughout. The tables had metal lamps with flame crystals, emitting both a warm orange light and actual warmth. She had toyed with magma grates here as well, but Nephthys thought the heat would be unpleasant, not to mention it seemed like a bad idea to have magma so close to books.

Ramose stood in the middle, a clipboard in his hand, a pen held loosely in his other, hanging limply at his side. He stared at the wall of texts, unblinking. Nephthys chuckled as she headed down to the lowest level. He would have his hands full for quite a while.

She watched the flowing white gown she wore flutter about her feet as she descended the steps. It was made of high-quality silk, but she could not remember its name. Some generic ‘Noble Regalia’ or something, probably. She had been wearing it since her ascension was completed, though not out of desire for it.

When she tested the functions of her body and magic in her bedroom, she also attempted to access her inventory. She did not recall what she had in it when she last played Prelude, but it should be significantly more than what was in there right now.

Nothing.

The inventory was a strange thing. Nephthys could feel it within her, as if it were a function of her body, like a muscle that she could move. However, it was not the grid menu from Prelude. It was more like recalling a room she had been in recently. She could picture the items: this chair over here, a book on that desk, and the bed in that corner.

There was nothing in her memory, though. It took her a decent chunk of time to realize that what she was experiencing was an empty inventory rather than some malfunctioning or otherwise inaccessible inventory function. She was on the verge of a panic attack at the thought of her inventory not carrying over, but seeing the vault exactly as she had left it restored her hope that her inventory had simply been transferred.

Stepping off the staircase, she stepped into a passage a mere ten feet wide, still large, but not the massive display the rest of the vault was. All pretense in this lowest level was dropped, and the hall was made of solid starmetal without the opulent marble covering it.

The hardest metal in Prelude, and excessively expensive, it was metal forged during the Skyfade impact event, a fusion of stellar materials from the Veilpiercer itself and material already present in Ashreach, crushed together by the intense force and heat. It was incredibly difficult to mine, let alone work with. It takes forges fired with crashglass dust to melt it, and that takes a long time.

Mining it is only possible by finding it in manageable chunks and then removing the surrounding material. In other words, ‘mining’ starmetal is breaking the rock around it and transporting the starmetal whole to a forge that can melt it.

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On top of all that difficulty, a forge capable of melting starmetal can only be created out of starmetal itself, buffered by a layer of pure crashglass. One must find an appropriately bowl-shaped deposit of starmetal in the wild, layer it with crashglass, and use it to create an actual starmetal forge, which one later transports to one’s base.

Or, if fortunate, one could find a small starmetal deposit shaped and ready to be transported to one’s base and used there. That would not ease the difficulty, but it would mean one was not exposed to threats while working with the world’s most difficult material in the wild.

Nephthys ran her fingers along the smooth, warm metal as she walked. Ironically, it was fantastic insulation. Although it maintained a temperature she would describe as lukewarm, it was an abysmal conductor, so it neither absorbed nor transferred heat well. It was about as good as one could get without modern vacuum insulation from her world.

At the end, she stood before a pedestal filled with blue enchantment tracings. They covered the face so thoroughly that it nearly looked uniformly blue. Nephthys had never been skilled with enchantments. She had specced almost exclusively in combat magic, relying on crafting NPCs for the rest.

Even still, she had to imagine that master enchanters examining this vault interface would have to pick their jaws up off the floor. The lines were a mix of geometric patterns, swirling curves, and what seemed to be runic etchings, all arranged so tightly that she almost needed a magnifying glass to examine them closer.

With barely-restrained anticipation and dread, Nephthys placed her hand on the pedestal.

[Accessing…]

[Identified user: Nephthys]

[Permission granted!]