4. Musings

"Alright, test number one, in three… two….one…. and, go."

Speaking to no one but himself and little Jinn, Rory pulled a lever as a pulse of pneuma and vital essence coursed through the channels in the ground, a large circle of runes and symbols flooding with power.

C'mon…. C'mon!

Rory himself was currently wearing a protective mask alongside other protective gear, unsure of what the test results might be.

C'mon!

Within the circle was a strange amalgam —a flesh golem composed of monster body parts and metal stitched together.

C'mon!

As the energies properly suffused the ritual circle, Rory held his breath.

Andddd…. Oh, fuck.

Everything had been looking good, but suddenly a spark of blue energy crackled out from one of the lines in the ritual circle, like a discharge of electricity —the single warning of imminent catastrophic failure.

With barely any warning, Rory projected a dome around himself and Jinn as the circle exploded like a landmine set off. Seconds passed until the debris settled, leaving Rory in a room that now had a rather large crater in the middle of it.

"Dang," Rory whistled. "Talk about some kick."

The backlash of the sudden failure wasn't too surprising given how much energy Rory had been working with, days of concentrated essence and pneuma exploding instantly.

It sucks, but that's also why I dug out so many extra rooms for doing experiments in.

He had long ago learned his lesson of attempting cutting-edge experiments in the more 'settled' rooms, losing valuable equipment in the process.

The experiment itself was Rory's best approximation of Dr. Frankenstein. Ages ago, he had already accomplished making Imp Constructs, semi-autonomous defensive units that had protected the walls of Ehkorrus. Now he was trying to level up that same field, be it literally or metaphorically, through the creation of golems.

The idea was simple enough: Inscribe runes upon a monster core, which would be the central 'brain' of the golem, add extra runes where necessary as peripheral instructions, and tadah, golem.

Alright, perhaps a bit of a simplified explanation.

What mattered was that his first test run had failed rather spectacularly, eliciting a sigh from Rory.

"Goes to show everyone who thinks I somehow magically pull everything off out of my ass on the first try," Rory muttered, the demonic laughing face of Zoey jumping to mind.

They had been living together for quite some time now, more time together than not at this point, but even then, they still clashed personalities often enough. While Zoey tended to defer to Rory on matters of decision-making, it was hellishly wrong to assume that she had placed herself below him in any fashion. In a sense, she reminded Rory of a cat. She'd show up when she pleased, demand attention and goodies, and then piss off. Occasionally, they'd spend time together, usually tackling a rather challenging delve she'd discovered. Otherwise, they kept to their own devices.

For Rory, that typically meant the endless expansion of his volcanic workshop and the continued development of ever more weapons, armors, and whatever else interested him in the moment. It was honestly starting to become a problem; his inventory, which had once seemed bottomless, was now akin to an overfilled storage shed.

Now, it wasn't without its benefits. The expansive catalogue of tools and tricks up his sleeve was what had allowed them to overcome B3 of the Deep Chambers, which had been crawling with level seventy-three monsters, peaking with a level seventy-five floor guardian. The reward for clearing that floor was a small shrub that looked not all that dissimilar from a blueberry bush.

It, alongside the tree from the B2 of the Deep Chambers, had been transplanted and now grew within a room specifically designed for plant husbandry and study.

The tree, once guarded by Zoey's most hated monster genotype –the wyrm— wasn't useful as a building resource. Instead, it was very useful from an alchemy standpoint; every few months, a plethora of black roses with a single red berry at their center would bloom.

What was interesting about them was that they, for reasons Rory didn't understand, seemed to expand the durability attribute.

And not temporarily. No, when properly refined and processed into a brew, it resulted in what was likely the most significant brew ever made to date.

Blooming Obsidian-Souled Rose Tonic

Tier: Seven

Quality: Tonic

Effect: Permanently augment one's durability. Increases raw durability by a minimal degree, while also imbuing a fractional element of heat tolerance.

Side effects: Internal combustion.

Oh, did Rory forget to mention the part that the cost for the benefit was your internal organs literally combusting? Because Rory hadn't known that little point until after drinking the first tonic.

Which had been…. Less than pleasant, and Rory could have sworn that had Eon any sense of humor, it was off in the middle of fuck-off nowhere laughing its ass off that it only mentioned the side effect in the description after Rory had tested it himself.

Now, Eon didn't have a sense of humor in that sense, or that was what Rory reminded himself of as he'd been lain out for several days as his organs healed from the damage inflicted. Therefore, it couldn't have been done as a prank.

Surely.

After that, each subsequent tonic inflicted lesser and lesser degrees of damage, but as a result, it boosted his overall durability and heat tolerance by smaller and smaller amounts.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

In the end, after he'd consumed nearly twenty of the tonics, his overall durability had been enhanced maybe ten percent or so before it stopped benefiting him entirely.

Zoey was worse off, seeing only a five to ten percent effect. How did they test the exact number?

By stabbing themselves, of course.

Each batch of roses was enough for perhaps one tonic. Ignoring how many had been wasted in the process of refining a recipe that worked, Rory had been stockpiling the tonics for some time now, up to ten in reserve.

For whom or what exactly? Rory had no idea, as Eia didn't seem to benefit from the tonic at all, other than the brief mention of it being 'spicy.'

The not-blueberry-bush, meanwhile, had no use alchemically speaking, as rather than growing any berry or herb, it instead seemed to grow small marbles made entirely of hardened ash.

While they lacked any apparent use for alchemy, they were very beneficial for forging, producing small but dense catalytic reagents that could be added to an alloy, resulting in a final product that was nearly five percent more durable, albeit five percent less flexible.

Other goodies had been picked up thanks to Zoey's adventures, and they were preparing for the next big hurdle.

B4 of the Deep Chambers.

They'd both reached level seventy-two, with Zoey verging on seventy-three, leaving them with some belief that B4 was within reach. The floor guardian was likely a level seventy-six monster, well and above the strongest foe either of them had ever faced down. Aside from the durability increase thanks to the Obsidian-Souled tonics, neither of them had seen a direct increase in their attributes. Still, one thing that had changed was their ability to maximize the attributes they did have, as if their bodies had needed time to slowly break in just how significant the jump from tier six to tier seven had been so many years ago. It wasn't enough to match up with the literal strength increase monsters saw every level –whereas they only gained attributes upon a direct tier up– but it was better than nothing. Combined with practical experience and the assortment of things in Rory's bag of tricks, clearing the fifth basement floor of the Deep Chambers was something they hoped to accomplish within the following year.

This was also part of why Rory was working on the golem project; if he could devise functional golems that weren't locationally locked, like his imp constructs, he could bring them into battle, aiding them as extra firepower or meat shields.

There was another reason aside from a general sense of progress for why Rory was excited at the prospect of facing down the fifth basement floor of the Deep Chambers, and that had to do with the tiny, almost insignificant itch that he felt at the back of his mind.

Bored. Rory was starting to get bored once more. For now, it was just a tiny little itch, barely something to notice, but it was there.

Rory wasn't sure what would be at the bottom of the Deep Chambers. There was a bottom given that they were on a mountain range floating in the sky, but whatever was there was something he found himself curious about. He felt something similar toward the very top of the mountain, but that was much further down the road, given he was reasonably sure a tier eight monster lived up there. Either way, the question of what was at the bottom was one of the few points that helped offset the encroaching boredom that threatened to fester within his mind.

Zoey was likewise someone who got bored easily. Where Rory had thrown himself into any project or idea that interested him, Zoey had been distracting herself by throwing herself at the countless delves dotting the many islands and mountains within the floating region. Eventually, though, they would run out just as much as Rory's attention to projects he found interesting within the volcanic region would.

But not today.

While Rory was self-aware enough to understand that, eventually, he would grow truly bored with the status quo, it wouldn't be for some time; he still had quite a few interesting ideas in mind.

Such as the golem, already scribbling new ideas down upon a tablet functionally similar to an Etch-a-Sketch made of stone, as he'd run out of paper a while back.

Now I wonder if….

Zoey was slowly growing bored.

She had been trapped in this region for longer than anywhere else in her entire time on Aelia. Sure, things had gotten better after meeting Rory, but there was an itch at the back of her mind.

She needed to see more.

For the time, she kept those thoughts at bay by throwing herself at the countless delves, overcoming them where she could, running when she couldn't, slowly sharpening her skills against them, and entertaining herself in the process.

But still, the slow itching boredom existed, an ember that would one day turn into a raging bonfire.

It wasn't as if she hadn't bothered to have Rory check out her Horizon Mirror, either. Shortly after meeting him, in fact, she had given him the mirror, where he'd examined it for some time before shrugging.

"It's busted."

"Yeah, I can see that," Zoey had said, mildly annoyed at how he pointed out the obvious.

"I can't fix it, not really."

"So, we're stuck here?"

"Not what I said," Rory corrected. "I said I can't fix it, not that it's not salvageable. I can probably use it as part of a component for something similar, though."

"Really?'

"Yeah, but not easily. I have an idea, but it's not something I'd want to try out anytime soon, not unless you want to end up floating in the silence of space because I fucked up our one shot."

"Oh, yeah, that's fair, I guess," Zoey had responded, even she could see the wisdom in not messing up something as important as what he suggested. "Hey, quick question. How exactly did you ever end up here to begin with?"

"Spatial Doorway."

"Spatial Doorway/"

"Yeah, a spatial doorway, a doorway through space."

"You say that so nonchalantly. Was it an item you found or made?"

"Little bit of A, a lot of B," Rory said. "The major components were found, a Null Window, Void Diamond, but ultimately it only moved up the timeline of something I always figured was possible based on some information I learned prior. Unlike your Horizon Mirror, it's far less likely to have a catastrophic failure as your little mirror did."

"Why exactly did it break in the first place?" Zoey followed up with a question that had been bothering her. "Was it just like, limited to a set number of uses?"

"Nah, the lack of a void shell meant that the destructive forces of stepping through space wore down on the mirror since it had to shield you from damage that you'd have otherwise taken."

"And what's a void shell?"

"This is a void shell," Rory raised his arm, shaking the vambrace he wore.

"That weird diamond?"

"Sort of, the diamond itself isn't a void shell, but it's used to generate a void shell upon stepping through space."

"And how exactly have you managed to learn all this?" Zoey asked, incredulous to the degree Rory seemed to be certain.

"My Bane was attuned to space and void energies, and I was also rewarded with information regarding spatial movement long ago. There was also a rather large delve nearby that could teleport between floors. Take those altogether, and piece together hypotheses and extrapolations over the years…."

"Got it," Zoey said. "Nerd shit. So, the main takeaway is, eventually we can get off these islands, right?"

"Yeah."

"Dope."

Zoey looked forward to the day they could leave, but that left another question for Zoey of the present.

Where exactly was Rory from?

It was something Zoey had noticed, but he rarely spoke of where he had lived before their volcanic prison—references here and there, but seldom any direct mentions.

It left her curious, but she wasn't about to start digging too much. Not that she didn't want to, she just didn't want to piss him off for real, not when she was banking on his help to escape in the future.

Which left another question.

What was their future?

Not in the romantic sense, this wasn't a shitty romance novel where the poor asexual girl just had to meet the right man to thaw her poor, frozen heart.

Yeah, as if.

No, she meant as partners. They worked together for the time being, but would that hold into the future? Would they go their own way? Turn on one another?

That last one, she doubted, Rory hadn't seemed the type to backstab like that, but they were questions she found herself asking. It would be easy to say they could remain partners; they worked well enough together, but how much of that was necessity? When proposing to herself the idea of permanently sticking by his side, Zoey found herself revolted. Not with Rory himself, the guy was a bit odd, but generally personable.

No, it was the thought of tying herself down, restricting herself, cutting out her independence. It was part of why she'd run away from home, why she had no interest in romance, none of it.

She was free, that was who Zoey was, free was at the spark of her soul.

So what will the future hold?

It was a question Zoey found herself contemplating as she stared at the two suns below, –above, relativity and all that shit— perched on the edge of a floating island marked by grey stone stalagmites.

Grabbing a small pebble, she flung it over the edge, watching it from her perspective as it fell far away, in true perspective, floating up into the sky.

Honestly, I don't care.

It wasn't some grand epiphany, just her honest feelings on the matter.

Just as long as I get to see new sights and have fun.

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