Draith
patreon
Chapter 48 - Meat and Mats
🕑 Added 2025-03-19 14:00:14 +0000 UTCBefore I'd arrived, the call of a wyvern would've been bad for the villagers.
Now that we were here, it was a boon.
Drawn in by the celebration, the wyvern flew straight towards us.
Calbern spun his blasting wand with the sort of flourish that told me he was looking forward to the fight.
Couldn’t say I disagreed.
The massive beast roared as it approached, and I could feel the energy in that call, attempting to cow us into submission. More than just sound.
It barely affected me, the strength of my Astral form meaning I was only slowed by a few fractions of a second. Enough to feel sluggish, but not enough to stop me from casting.
First I used Gust to push Tanis and Selvi into cover, breaking the wyvern’s hold on them.
Then I storm danced away from Calbern, forcing the wyvern to split its attention, even as I started on the targeting glyphs. I wasn’t sure if a single lightning bolt would be enough. It had been for Nexxa, but she was Pegasus-souled.
Petals were already flying towards it from Calbern’s blasting rod. It didn’t much appreciate that, shifting its aim towards him.
Before it could reach him, I finished casting lightning bolt. The spell flew true, charring the entire right side of its face. The wyvern’s motions grew erratic, though its momentum meant it remained moving forward. Directly towards the chasm where Tetherfall resided.
It looked like it was going to be more dangerous in death than in life.
I charged forward, screaming for Tanis to help as I attempted to get close enough to use gust to redirect it. Calbern was already on the other side, driving his sword into one of the legs and using it as leverage to slow the beast. It barely affected it.
Then Tanis was there. Instead of trying to slow the beast by hand, he picked me up and took me towards it.
“In front, get me in front,” I weezed, doing my best not to picture what Tanis and I looked like. Maintaining my dignity wasn’t as important as making sure it didn’t wreck half of Tetherfall.
Didn’t mean I had to like it.
Tanis’s long legs got us in front of the wyvern, and I unleashed an overpowered Gust on it. Which, by itself, wasn’t enough.
So I unleashed several more as I directed Tanis to do as Calbern was, leaving me standing directly between the wyvern and the edge of the chasm. I kept casting until my mana was entirely spent, yet the wyvern kept coming. It was slowing though. It was almost entirely stopped.
Out of mana, I used the only thing I had left. My muscles. I stood on the edge, setting my feet to lean into it, then pushed back against its neck.
It was a losing fight.
The wyvern kept going. The second my feet left the ground, I cursed, glancing down.
I was dangling over Tetherfall, my hands, which I’d dug into its scales in an attempt to get a better grip to stop it, now the only thing keeping me from falling hundreds of feet.
Only then did it finally stop.
Dozens of villagers and hundreds of ropes were needed to haul it back from the edge. Myris retrieved me personally, laughing the entire time. Once it was done, I told them to harvest the meat and add it to the villages stores, causing the mood of the villagers to soar as high as the wyvern had before its generous donation.
While it was being carved up, I watched the villagers work. And listened to them.
I could almost see what Tresla had been referring to. There was far too much reverence towards me, for one thing. Clearly they hadn’t seen the fight. There was also a great deal of disbelief that I'd share such a 'glorious' prize.
And while they were all enthusiastic workers, most had no clue what they were doing. If Tanis hadn't been bellowing out Selvi's instructions, I wasn't sure the villagers would've been capable of butchering the wyvern at all. Still, the villagers were working well enough. The wyvern was almost two tons of good meat, not including all the bits that'd be used for stews. It'd help for a while. I'd already told Selvi my hopes to acquire some nibblers, and she said she'd round up some people.
Which meant I had time to think about other issues.
Such as the mage staff and Balthum's hidden chambers. I felt the staff was the logical starting point. It could have clues to where the chambers were located or it might even serve as a key to accessing them.
Those were just vague hopes, but it was enough to make the staff my starting point.
Which meant returning to the Memory Palace once more. Before entering, I took the staff in hand, letting Calbern know what I was attempting. His response was perfect, but stiff. Neither of us were as relaxed as before he’d guided my hand to kill seven men.
I shook my head, setting the staff across my lap as I finished channeling Memory Palace. Once inside, I moved to the workbench where the replica of the staff lay waiting.
I'd already discerned that the spells in the staff were mostly completed, and now I simply had to figure out the keys. It was an enjoyable puzzle, using my knowledge of rune patterns to figure out what the missing bits might be.
It was complex enough, I ended up calling it for the night without having solved any of them. While I was sleeping, the answer struck me, and I sat up in my bed, suddenly awake. After I startled awake, I pulled the staff back into my lap and I dived back in.
Each of the keys were unique, but the main component missing from all of the spells was the mana regulation rune. There were different supporting runes that linked the rune into the staff, but it was the only key function missing in every spell. Of course, not all of the spells used the same mana regulation rune, and it seemed like the big bad attack spell was missing a second major rune for targeting, but just knowing that the mana regulation rune was missing was enough for me to have some solid sketches put together by the time the sun came up.
The Memory Palace had just enough connection to the outside to simulate the sun rising inside. Putting my work to the side, I begrudgingly exited the garage and got up to deal with the new day.
Myris and Zerin were waiting with a third of the village when I got to the eastern cliff. Most of the villagers had baskets of roots, harvested from their mats the day before, ready to be shoved in a crack so I could cast Bloom on them.
I couldn't help but feel a little overwhelmed. There was no way I could keep up with twenty people stuffing roots in cracks, never mind however many were standing there.
"Good morning, Magus Dominus," Zerin called the second he spotted me.
I simply nodded back while climbing towards them. After I was tied into my specially woven vine-harness, we got to work. The villagers took off ahead of me, and I was swung out to start.
It didn't take long to realize why they'd mobilized so many villagers. Myris had arranged for a team to keep me in motion, and with my only concern being casting Bloom, my mana regeneration was my only limiter.
Which was a major limiter at first. Each cast of Bloom was relatively cheap, but to get the roots to grow to fill the cracks they were wedged in would take me close to a quarter of my mana pool, meaning I could only do four per hour.
"Too much," Myris said after the first hour, waving at the roots I'd just finished working with.
"Yeah, it's expensive," I agreed, looking around at the huge swath of cliffside I hadn't gotten to yet.
"No. Too much growth. Only needs to dig in. Will have to cut out most," Myris clarified, pulling a knife from behind her back and demonstrating just how much I'd overdone it. "Better for roots to grow with the mat."
"Won't they grow faster with more roots?"
Myris didn't respond, simply staring at me until I looked away.
So, progress resumed, though this time it was faster. Following her instructions, I hardly had to use Bloom on each bundle of roots. Just enough to get them to dig into the cracked rock, then move on. It took me an hour to figure out the trick of directing Bloom with such precision, but once I had, the limiting factor was how quickly they could move me into position.
Despite that, I still only finished half the cliffside we'd prepped the day before. To my surprise, some of the first vines were already showing signs of green, despite the fact I'd only boosted the growth of their roots.
"There are reasons we use the mats," Selvi said when I commented on the rapid growth. "Even without your magic, most of these should have a light weave a month from now."
"Myris said we might want to do the western cliffside too," I said, cracking my neck. Hanging from a vine harness all day was somehow worse than tossed around by Fang.
"Already being done," Selvi said, tucking her thumbs into her belt. "Only a couple tenders are willing to work the western cliffs, but it'll be ready for you once you're finished here."
"Good. That's good."
"Amazing how fast you got this done," Selvi said, shaking her head. "Would've taken us months just to break up the cliff. And probably would've lost half the mats before the roots could take hold."
I nodded, pulling the harness off. Magic really was a force multiplier, but with the right tools, I was certain the villagers could've done the prep work almost as fast as I had. Might've been a bit harder on the arms, but still…
There were a lot of non-magical solutions that'd been passed over, at least in this corner of the world. It was possible Balthum had been suppressing them, but the people under the Frost Riven had been just as bad off. Heck, even the Frost Riven themselves.
They had magic solutions to a lot, but they didn't make use of the mundane for much other than cooking. On the other hand, being able to ensure the roots stuck by using Bloom… that really was a cheat. Though again, a little bit of glue could've achieved the same.
Once more, as the day drew to a close, I started experimenting with the staff. Getting the rough form of the keys was easy enough, but I was hesitant to attempt an activation without everything lining up perfectly.
And it turned out getting things perfect was a lot harder than figuring out that a key rune was missing. I started with the simplest spell, which only required four support runes to connect it.
It still took me two hours to complete. I started each attempt by drawing out a design, using the garage to replicate a physical copy, and then laying the design against an inert version of the staff. Then I'd take note of where it was off before starting again. The process was remarkably similar to making repairs to a damaged undercarriage. That said, it was a lot faster per iteration, and I couldn't just reinforce the weak parts with extra steel to give a more robust frame, so it wasn't exactly the same.
Close enough though.
When it was done, I had a perfect match.
The only problem was, I didn't have a way to use it. I could scribe it as its own spell, but that felt incredibly wasteful. And it defeated the utility of having spells scribed into a staff.
What I needed was a utility spell that would let me use the keys, much like Grivis had.
Pulling up Access Storage, I looked at the design. There were components that I didn't need — including the complicated rune sequences that allowed interfacing with something that didn't exist on the prime material plane — so I stripped them out.
The remaining structure only needed a couple patches to make up for the lost connections and a less sophisticated targeting sequence. Still, I realized that if I wanted to get any sleep, that would have to wait for the next evening.
The next morning, my return to the eastern cliffside was only a little delayed by my late night. When I arrived, I discovered a strong wind in the night had knocked half of the untended roots loose. Working around the tenders as they replaced the roots ended up taking most of the day. I could've started on the western cliffside, but I decided to continue working on the staff's keyspell instead.
It didn't take me long to finish the design. Then I had to re-code the spell key so it would take up less room. Doing so took nearly an hour, after my second and triple checks.
Unlike the original design, I couldn't test the spell itself without scribing it.
So, as much as it bugged me, I put it off for another day, so I could check it with fresh eyes.
The western cliffside was hot, humid and already showing signs of life. Most of the roots were still in place, but even at a glance I couldn't help but note how chaotic the mats here were going to be. There were a few sections where Calbern had blasted extra holes, and those grids made the chaos everywhere else stand out even more.
Still, it didn't affect my task. It was slower, making sure the roots were embedded here. The stone cracked easier, but that meant the mats needed more contact points. Which meant it took more mana for each set of roots. And that meant I only finished a third of the cliffside.
I decided to call a break from working on the mats at that point. I'd return to it later, but the monotony of the task was getting to me. Besides the meat from the wyvern would only last so long. And I wanted to explore the rest of my domain, especially the sole vale. Really, my decision was mostly to escape the tedium.
And because I'd finished the key spell for the staff.
It was time to find out what the first spell did.
