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CH.354 Star Titanium
CH.354 Star Titanium
With Einar and Mariina’s evolutions now over, I was happy to level Eline up again. I know this will most likely result in her evolving like Einar did, but the evolution tanks are ready to go, so she can evolve as she wants.
For my own part, I put what I thought about One of Every Race into action and immediately noticed some differences. My body just … operates better when I am of the correct race for the task. I think the two it is the most noticeable with are magic and swordsmanship. I always used to train both as a Dragon Hearted, unless I was specifically going for Spirit Magic, but now I was using Swordsman (Advanced Human) and Sorcerer (Advanced Human) respectively.
And it made a huge difference. My body just moved … differently. It felt like I was a lot more optimized for those actions. For swordsmanship, it almost felt like my body itself was correcting small mistakes I was making. Sure the big ones would still be ones that I couldn’t correct, but the small ones, I really didn’t make many of them, as they almost auto-corrected themselves. Even my instructing monster was impressed.
The same went with magic. My Mana Control just felt supercharged when I was a Sorcerer. To the point where it reminded me of something that happened in the past. The time I eliminated the rogue core of HomeBase, well back then it was still dungeon 27_001.
At that time, a System window informed me of something interesting. It said:
| The rush of power from the core has advanced your mana circuits. Mana Control speed increased. |
I did notice a change back then, especially when using Telekinesis. But the difference with magic wasn’t as great. But the difference between being a Dragon Hearted and using Space Magic, compared to being a Sorcerer (Advanced Human was about the same as the boost I got to my Mana Control at that time.
… Didn’t I promise Alice I’d look into if I can artificially cause an effect similar to what I experienced when eliminating the rogue core? Or do I recall that wrong? I’m not sure. But it still is something I should look into.
There is just one problem. I don’t really have excess SS-rank monster cores. I mean, I only have two of them in Storage, and one of those is to be sold to Marquess Oroco when he gets the payment for it ready. So all I have is the behemoth’s core, and I’m not sure I want to use it.
Sure if I do manage to somehow advance Alice’s mana circuits, it would help her a lot. And that is her core to do with as she wants. But I also don’t want to use my last SS-rank core in case I need it for something else.
… maybe I should just spawn an SS-rank monster with the Chaos God Core? Then defeat it and claim its core. Or I could just make an artificial SS-rank monster core. Well, I’ll put designing a mana circuit advancing device on my Todo list and call it a day for now. Because with all the excess mana HomeBase has, I might even be able to make one without having to use an SS-rank core.
“... yeah. No.” I quietly said to myself after testing the first prototype Mana Circuit Advancer. I had it in mind, and while I was thinking of pushing it to another day, I instead decided to work on it right now.
And I failed. Badly. Well, sort of. Because in a way, it also does work. Let me recap.
My idea was simple. Push a massive amount of mana through someone’s body. Their body would have to quickly adjust to the surge of mana, thus advancing their mana circuits. And in theory, and actually also in practice, it works.
But if it works, why is it a failure?
Simple. Because it hurts like hell. Doing that is basically the same as strapping someone to a high voltage electric line and forcing all of that electricity to run through their body. Well, mana is a bit less deadly than the electricity would be, but the fundamental problem is the same. Using this method, you are basically breaking someone’s body with a massive overload of mana, in hopes that they survive to see their powered up mana circuits.
Aka. it is a torture device that very well might kill you. Sure if you survive, you’ll get a boost, but I cannot use this. Let’s just scrap the entire idea and start again from something else.
And so, because I didn’t want to work on something I knew would fail, I ended up doing something just as important, but also completely different. Well, I suppose this also has to do with magic, so it isn’t completely different.
What I began working on were magic stones. I already know how to fill a monster core with magic, that part is easy, but I still don’t know the ‘compression’ part that happened at the end, when the core was filled with mana. I had to rely on Dark Sage or one of my other high level Spellcasters for that.
So today, I was going to learn a bit more about the compression part. And I had a secondary objective as well. I wanted to make some nature-attributed magic stones for the CropFarm.
For that, I needed a few nature spirits, so I used my skill to call for them. They were a bit disappointed that I was a Sorcerer instead of a Spiritual Human, but after I explained to them that I was trying to master this race so that I could combine it with Spiritual Human, they accepted it and agreed to help me with my objective.
With Dark Sage watching over us, we began filling a B-rank monster core with mana. The process was a bit special, as I had to give the mana to the spirits, and they would then put it into the core. That way, it would take on their attribute. At the same time, I was pulling mana from HomeBase, just to make sure I wouldn’t run out, because even with my massive mana pool, I couldn’t quite fill up a B-rank core, as filling one out takes around 10,000 mana or so.
Also, in case you were wondering, the core we were using was from a B-rank aqua treant. Treants are basically nature based monsters, and an aqua treant is water on top of it, so using a water/nature core would make the final magic stone a bit stronger than if I just used something like a typhoon bird’s core.
The filling took some time, but with all of the mana available to us, we didn’t have to take a break to recharge our mana. … admittedly, it is also a bad thing for me. Having all of this cheaty mana available for me to use. I almost never, except when I make magic stones which isn’t often, exhaust my entire mana pool. Even when training, I don’t really run out, because if I get close to running out, I’ll just recharge off of HomeBase mana. And because of that, I don’t have the Fast Mana Recovery skill. Maybe the device I should make is some sort of a mana drainer instead of the mana circuit advancer. I could put it on myself when I sleep, and my body will want to recover the mana I’m losing. Repeat that over a bunch of nights and I think I’ll gain the Fast Mana Recovery skill in a few weeks.
As I kept converting the monster cores into magic stones, I had to keep summoning ‘fresh’ nature spirits, because the previous ones got bored and wanted to leave. And because a new one didn’t want to come to a flower or plant a spirit had just used as their focal point, I had to have fresh flowers brought to my magic stone conversion operation. Thankfully both Cina and Molly were free, so the two of them quickly took up the job of moving some plants for me. Maybe it is time for me to show some love for them? They are basically the only HomeBase workers that haven’t gotten any one-on-one time with me. Well, there is also Maya, as well as Unika’s mother, but the two of them … I’ll come up with something to do with them.
Anyway. I got sidetracked with my thoughts again. It just happens when I do something my body can do pseudo automatically. Let’s finish these magic stones so I can use them to boost the growth speed of the CropFields even more.
By the end of the conversion process, we had a total of 4 B-rank nature attributed magic stones ready. … Sadly, I didn’t master the compression part of making magic stones, so I still need more practice with that.
With the new magic stones on hand, I headed for the CropFields. There, I set up the magic stones on a growth boosting magic device. I knew they existed since Paulina gave one as a gift to her father, so I searched the HomeBase catalog for one and found one that would work. They were designed to work with any magic stone, not just nature attributed stones, but the nature stones are more effective, so I decided to use them instead.
I then called Cailie to the CropFields to explain to her what I had done. She was the overseer of this area, so she needed to know this. It wouldn’t add to her work really, other than her having to check up on the devices once a day. But she already checked each field once a day, so it really was nothing much.
After that job, I headed for the workshop so I could check on the star titanium process. I had the report about it, but I wanted to see for myself. … The quick answer was that it wasn’t going well. The major problem that we had in the real world vs. the successful Factory test was the environment where this all took place. In the Factory, my monsters used a mana barrier and other tricks to keep all oxygen away from the titanium during the forging process, but that wasn’t something we could easily do in the real world. I mean, even in the Factory, it took multiple high level monsters working in unison to turn titanium into star titanium, so doing it in the real world, and with the monsters being limited to the power output of the avatar dolls, made it even more difficult.
And for that reason, I was going to have a chat with Wilma and Karl about it. I didn’t want the two of them to keep going, unless they had an idea how it might turn out successful. We are wasting valuable Ursa Major materials on this after all.
“I think we need more mana.” Wilma said. “When I asked your monsters about how they did it, they spoke of something called ‘stardust’. Some sort of super condensed magic that they added with the parts of the claw. I think we need that.”
“Oh? I don’t think that was on the report.” I quickly got out the report from my monsters and skimmed over it, and at no point did it mention the use of stardust.
Of course I don’t have many monsters that can even use stardust. And for those that need a reminder, stardust is a super condensed version of mana that is needed for Celestial magic. It is used by a few of the strongest Spellcasters I have access to. Mainly Sorcerer of Dark Magic and Quintet Magician.
Few of the others like Silent Magician LV8, Dark Magician of Chaos and Dark Sage can also use it, but it is too intense for them, so they don’t use it as their primary magic.
But that is an interesting thought. Stardust. Stardust + titanium = star titanium? Probably not, but maybe?And since stardust is just mana compressed in a specific way, I should be able to make a stardust generator. Or should I call it mana compactor? Nah. Stardust generator sounds better. Well, let’s first test if stardust + Ursa Major’s claw + titanium make star titanium first, then let’s check if I can simplify the process even more.
I told Karl and Wilma to take it easy with the star titanium for now, as I didn’t want them to waste more materials until the stardust situation was dealt with. That was the idea, but.
“No. Let us continue. Brian. You can summon that monster that can use this ‘stardust’, right? Can’t you do that right now? I know if we have that, we will succeed.” Wilma insisted.
“I mean I can, but that won’t solve everything.” I argued.
“Master. I believe it would be good for us to try.” Karl said. “The two of us won’t be able to rest if we don’t.”
“...”
“Would you? Please?” Wilma asked.
“...”
“We will succeed this time.” Karl agreed.
“... fine. But if this doesn’t succeed, I’m ordering a pause until I’ll have a stardust generator ready for you.” I told them. “Actually, even if this does succeed, I’m still going to put a pause on the star titanium process until we have a better way of using stardust. And I’m not going to hear a no from either of you.”
“Yes Sir.” Wilma answered.
“Let’s do it.” Karl added.
I called out almost every monster mentioned on the report about how they made their star titanium. I said almost, as I’m not calling Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon here, even if they used his light breath to heat the titanium in the Factory. That just won’t work here, as the workshop isn’t equipped to handle that. Instead, I have Silent Magician LV.8 who will be using light magic to ‘emulate’ that effect.
Other than her, I of course had Sorcerer of Dark Magic and Quintet Magician here. They were in charge of making and handling the stardust. Cosmo Queen was here to make a barrier that would keep oxygen from getting to the ingot and of course Iron Blacksmith Kotetsu was here to do some smithing.
And to add to the crew, I even called Guardian Angel Joan here. Her job was to make sure Wilma and Karl could operate at maximum power for the entire time.
With the entire crew here, I let Wilma be the one in charge, while I stood back and out of the way. But this time, I’m going to observe and if anything goes wrong, I’ll stop this process.
“DONE!” Wilma called out, as they finished the ingot of metal.
They weren’t done with making a sword, or anything like that, but what they had done was convert a piece of titanium, with a bit of Ursa Major’s claw and some stardust help, into star titanium.
“Quintet. Bring it to me.” I ordered my monster, and he did as ordered. He used magic to bring the finished piece of metal to me and I quickly took it into Storage for analysis.
I waited for Tahlia to analyze it, and once I got the report, I announced it to the room.
“It is an ingot of high quality, stable, star titanium.” I told everyone. “Well done.”
“... is … is it really?” Wilma asked, almost questioning herself.
“Yes, it is.” I confirmed.
“... YES!!!!” Wilma called out loud enough where I think most of HomeBase heard it, despite the fact that the workshop is sound insulated for obvious reasons.
“I believe this calls for a stiff drink.” Karl said, almost exceedingly casually.
“I think you mean a party.” I corrected him. “I’ll get some drinks ready. You all, thank you.” I said to my monsters. “I’ll call on you again, as I do. But the ingot isn’t a sword yet, so that will be next.”
“As you wish, Master.” Quintet Magician answered as the representative of my monsters, and I then unsummoned all of them.
As I said earlier, I threw a small celebration for the accomplishment of my workshop team. It was honestly more of a drinking party, but I don’t mind. Sometimes just drinking can be fun, though I had to keep Einar, Eline and Valoa from the adult juice. Not that two of them even wanted it, but Einar seemed like he would have liked to try. In a few years. Promise.
The party was honestly quite fun, and Cailie being spoken into performing a song didn’t make it any worse.
And as the party was going on, Wilma came to talk to me.
“... Brian. There is something private I’d like to discuss. Would it be possible?” She asked.
I looked around and deduced that the party doesn’t really need us now, so I agreed and teleported the two of us to my office.
“... so, what is it?” I asked.
“I … I’m not sure how to explain it.”
“I can’t help, if I don’t know the problem.” I told her.
“It isn’t a problem. … just … I’ll … Status Open.” Wilma said to open her status.
Maybe she gained a new skill or something?
Wilma didn’t have any new skills. That much was obvious. But she did have a mysterious little ? -mark at the end of her race. And that can only mean one thing.
“Well, well, well. I suppose I must congratulate you again. System Support Holder Wilhelmina.” I jokingly said.
“... What do I do?” Wilma asked.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“I mean, I hold the System Support now. Doesn’t that mean that I am… some sort of a … priest or something?” Wilma asked.
“... Wilma. Do I look like a priest?” I asked her.
“Well no, but…”
“And you know I also have the System Support.” I reminded her.
“Well yes, but…”
“Then what is there to worry about?” I asked her. “You are a System Support Holder. And even more than that, you are my worker. No one will ever force you to do anything as long as you work for me, so don’t worry. No church, no country, not even the Goddess will do anything to you, if you don’t want to. Always remember that.” I reassured her.
“... thank you, Brian.” Wilma said, as she calmed down.
“Anytime. And if you need to talk to me about your new System Support, you know my office is open. But let’s get back to the party before the others assume something is actually wrong.”
“... Yes.” Wilma agreed, and I teleported the two of us back to where the others were.