Saturday, Challenge Four, Day 5, 2.65
A wand has three primary components: a battery, a spell formation, and a targeting array. There are a few smaller parts, like essence channels and an essence converter for charging the battery, but that’s about it.
The batteries are pretty much all the same. Their primary quality is storage. I captured that into an empty core, enhanced it with the titan’s core, and leveled it up. Then I merged that core back into a battery to create a Greater Mana Battery
Spell formations are encoded in a chunk of clear spellstone, faceted and polished. Twisting it in the light lets you glimpse the glyphs etched into the stone, complex patterns suspended inside the spellstone itself. I suspect I could use the raw spellstone I got from Challenge Three to create my own, but so far I’ve made almost no sense of the tomes I found. Without a way to encode spells into spellstone, I’m stuck with whatever spells I can buy.
Targeting arrays are different. Those are purpose-built for each wand. For example, the Wand of Emberetching
Swapping targeting arrays between different wands has been interesting. Normal illusions last about six minutes. When using the concentrated targeting array from the emberetching wand, those same illusions can last up to a day. Sure, they can’t be bigger than a coin, but still. It means the same energy produces different effects depending on how tightly the magic is focused.
Adding the sleep wand’s targeting array to the emberetching wand created a stream of fire that shot out a long distance, but vanished almost immediately. It also set the forest floor on fire. Took me ten minutes to stomp it out.
Merging and upgrading these targeting arrays has been the most interesting part so far. Creating a Greater Ranged Array
Using a greater battery, emberetching spellstone, and greater proximal array resulted in my first epic crafted item:
Wand of Emberfilament (Level 4)
Grade: Produces a close-range filament of fire, thin as wire and hot enough to cut through wood like a blade. Originally an ember-etching tool, rebuilt into a brutal cutting wand.
Crafter: Rembrandt de Vries
Unfortunately, the wood casing caught fire immediately, rendering the wand a smouldering pile.
More experimentation needed.
Saturday, Challenge Four, Day 5, 2.66
Saturday, Challenge Four, Day 5, 2.134
Congratulations. You have awakened a primitive sensory faculty shared by all species that collect essence.
Skill Acquired: Essence Perception (Level 1)
Essence Perception allows you to perceive essence around you. At lower levels the range and fidelity of the perception is limited.
Here’s the skill description:
Essence Perception (Level 1)
That’s about right. It’s really just that. It’s not seeing. It’s not smelling. Nor is it a feeling. Imagine standing in a dark room, absolute darkness and knowing with certainty that right next to you is a table, where the edges are. It’s the most bizarre sense.
It’s like when you close your eyes and then perfectly remember where everything is, and can reach out and pick up things you left around you without making a mistake.
As it is, it’s pretty useless. Might be able to help me see just a little around me. Will continue to use the blindfold.
Day 5, 2.174
Take a strength core from a rhino beetle, merge a titan’s core into it, level it to four, duplicate that ten times and merge those cores into an Elixir of Zephyr and you get an Elixir of Kratos.
Elixir of KratosGain +2 strength permanently.
Like the others you can drink three of them before they stop working. That +6 to strength permanently. Works fine. The character sheet shows seventeen strength but I’m not any more muscular now than I was before. On a related note, I’ve been doing body resistance exercises every day since I got here. I expected to see some natural strength gains. Nothing.
I really don’t understand it. I eat and drink. Food passes through me normally. If I break my hand or cut myself, I heal. So biological function is the same. But my body doesn’t change. Am I not growing?
It really makes me wonder if I even need to eat or drink. Is my body locked in this biological state?
Oh. Essence perception is leveled enough that I can do all this while blindfolded. Even writing. Brain has learned to interpret the sensation visually. Now I “see” different colored essences everywhere. It’s too much. I need to learn to focus and block out stuff like air essence or else it overwhelms me.
Day 5, 2.221
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Took the blindfold off. Trying to get used to combining essence perception with normal sight. What a downgrade. When I close my eyes I can examine everything down the the near atomic level. Repeatedly doing this has helped me massively level up the skill.
Another thing. I thought there were no animals here. Turns out there are millions of them, they are all just microscopic. It’s like an entire alien landscape of predators and prey. Everywhere I look there’s a constant struggle for survival going on right around me, silently.
Experiment with all these little creatures?
He ignored the helpful advice.
It had been ten days since he’d eaten. Three since he’d had a drink. He was fairly sure his body was locked in some kind of physiological stasis—that he didn’t need food or water anymore—but this would tell him for certain. Holding his breath on land never worked. His mind always broke first.
Here, he could force it.
He pushed on. The surface flattened behind him. Gray water. Gray sky. Just the need to keep moving so the cold wouldn’t seize him in place.
When the bottom dropped away beneath his feet, he rolled forward, filled his lungs, and tipped himself under.
The cold closed hard. It jammed into his ears and jaw and crowded his thoughts until there was room for nothing but motion. Sound vanished. Pressure took its place. His chest tightened around the breath he held. Muscles protested, then settled into work.
He shut his eyes and opened Essence Perception.
Sight vanished. The lake reassembled itself through force and movement instead. Layers of pressure. Slow currents sliding past his ribs. The steady presence of water essence holding him suspended. Below, the lakebed resolved into weight and structure—stone packed with silt, the channels he’d cleared long ago still etched into the bottom.
He angled down, teeth clenched against the ache in his jaw. His fingers closed around a medium rock. He pulled it into his arms and sat on the lakebed, holding it in his lap.
He sat there. The rock was cold and solid against his thighs. His arms locked around it to keep himself from drifting. The lake pressed evenly from every side.
At first it felt clean. Controlled. His lungs were full. His chest held steady. He counted heartbeats and nothing argued back. The cold kept him sharp.
This was manageable.
This was proof.
Then his body spoke.
A hitch ran through his diaphragm. Not pain. A reminder. His throat tightened. His tongue pressed hard against the roof of his mouth, sealing the reflex down by force. He adjusted his grip on the rock and stayed still.
Another pull followed. Stronger. His chest flexed without permission. The muscles between his ribs jumped, trying to open space that wasn’t there. He locked them down with posture and will, shoulders set, spine straight against the pressure.
The certainty thinned.
Time stretched without landmarks. No sound. No light. Just the steady crush of water and the growing heat inside his chest. His pulse thudded in his ears, fast and uneven. His hands tingled. Fingers twitched around the stone.
Breathe.
The word hit hard and simple. His throat spasmed. His jaw clenched until it ached. He forced the command down, pushed it out of his head the same way he pushed through the cold—with effort, not grace.
The next surge was panic. Raw and physical. His diaphragm bucked hard enough to shake his whole frame. His lungs tried to empty and refill at once. Spots flared behind his closed eyes. The rock shifted in his lap as his grip faltered.
This is the end.
His body screamed it. Every signal collapsed into a single demand. His shoulders jerked. His legs tensed, ready to kick. He felt his hands loosening, the rock starting to slide.
He tightened his arms instead.
Held.
Another surge came—and broke. Not into relief. Into nothing.
The pressure in his chest flattened. The burning eased, not gone but contained, like a muscle finally accepting load. His pulse slowed. The frantic edge drained out of the water around him.
He waited for the next wave.
It didn’t come.
His lungs stayed full and quiet. No pull. No clawing reflex. Just weight and cold and the steady presence of the lake holding him in place. Essence Perception showed no rupture, no failure—only balance. Flow moving past him. Pressure equalized.
He didn’t need air.
The knowledge settled without triumph. He stayed seated on the lakebed, arms still locked around the rock, letting the truth hold for a few more seconds before he trusted himself to move.
He dropped the rock and pulled himself along the bottom, hooking his fingers into the grooves as he inspected them with Essence Perception. Every stone. Every grain of silt that had slipped back since his last pass.
Silt burst free in thick clouds and drifted off, tugged by currents he felt through his forearms and shoulders. His hands went numb—not dead, just distant. He worked faster, not from panic, but necessity. It was cold.
As he worked, he pushed his sense outward. The lake filled his awareness.
Essence was everywhere. Crowded. Restless. Constant feeding and motion packed into the thin space between stone and water. He registered it without engaging and let it pass through him without sticking.
The last groove cleared under his palm. He pressed the silt smooth, checked the slope, then stilled himself. The lake supported his weight. Pressure balanced out.
The grooves and control spheres glowed with bright white essence. Cold. Precise. He watched them thrum, saw the formation pulse and push outward, the thread from the small control sphere wrapping him in a shell of hard light.
One of the first signatures he’d learned to ignore.
Rem pushed off the bottom and rose, slow and deliberate, following the pull upward. He kept his eyes closed the whole way, focused on the pressure easing from his chest and the faint warmth creeping back into his hands.
When he surfaced, he took a slow breath. Not because he needed it. Just because it felt good.
The return to shore was quick. As he pulled himself out of the lake, he saw a spark—a single bright pulse where his foot crushed a patch of moss.
He turned his sense there, focusing down.
The moss glowed with life, and inside, clinging to the smallest tendrils, the brightest emerald essence he’d ever seen.
“Hello there.”
