Ar'Kendrithyst

“Did you sleep well?” Erick asked Teressa, over a late breakfast.

“Best I’ve slept in a long time,” Teressa said, cutting into her large omelet.

Erick had watched her some while she slept, and yes, she had slept well, as far as he had seen. It was still important to ask these questions and get confirmation, though. It had been 20 hours since her accident, and her soul seemed completely fine—

With a small grin, Teressa said, “If the worst should happen and you gotta [Reincarnation] me, I’d like to be myself again.”

Erick shuddered a little, unable to find any words to say. He was scared of that possibility. He hoped that wouldn’t need to happen.

Kiri spoke, “Me too—” She rapidly corrected, “I’d like to be myself, is what I mean. I don’t want to be Teressa.” Her emerald scale face flushed a bit darker.

Ah?

Erick almost stared at her, for Kiri had taken Teressa’s admittance of worry for something much more lighthearted than it had been.

“I would also like to be myself,” Poi nodded seriously, as he said, “But a bit taller.”

Now Poi? Poi was just fucking with Erick in order to make him worry less.

Poi smiled at that thought.

Teressa kept grinning as the conversation turned to hypotheticals. “Maybe shorter would be better, for me. Bigger boobs. Maybe less muscular.”

Kiri laughed. “I suppose an orcol wouldn’t get back problems with age! Might as well go with as big of boobs as you can!”

“Now you’re just being silly,” Erick said, trying not to sound like he was complaining.

Poi nodded, then spoke in a serious tone that was not serious at all, “I will have a list of my own adjustments I would like if the worst should happen, Sir.”

Kiri and Teressa both laughed, and Erick did too, if only a chuckle.

Worry seemed to vanish like so much morning mist.

Still, though, Erick decided he would spend the day at home and put off all his meetings that he could put off. For necessary meetings, Erick could go to them in person. Work didn’t stop just because people got hurt. Teressa might not be worried about anything anymore (which might make her a liability as a bodyguard, but Erick would save that discussion for later) but Erick was still worried about his own little part of the world falling apart if he didn’t do his best.

- - - -

He could still do some magic, though, since Teressa was staying home. While Kiri went off to work with Mox, and Poi remained with Teressa, Erick moved over to his warehouse to get started on some spellwork which would become necessary for the future, if not tonight. First came an attempt at his [10 Restful Hours in 10 Minutes] spell.

But there were a lot of moving parts to this sort of magic. Erick mentally listed out the problems he would have to solve for, and then how he would solve them.

[Haste] was only a doubling of subjective time, so Erick would need to add in the Variable Cost Variable Effect spellwork to solve for that problem. Easy enough to do with some Blood Magic methodology.

The next problem was that the barrier which separated speedy time and normal time was too fragile; Ophiel had broken the previous version of this magic just by stepping through that barrier. So to solve this, Erick would use [Force Wall], since he couldn’t very well make another Solid Ward. This separation would ensure that nothing broke the spell’s effect.

[Ward], which was the basis for this magic, had a duration of 24 hours, so that was more than enough. [Force Wall] had a natural duration of 100 minutes. [Haste] was rather short at only lasting 10 subjective minutes, which was only 5 minutes in real time. Erick could probably solve this through some Permanency methodology, linked to the Variable Cost Variable Effect spellwork.

Having separated space locked off by a [Force Wall] would lead to air quality problems, though. Luckily, the fix for that was simple; a [Cleanse] on the interior edge of the barrier. Not fully inside, but restricted to a slice of space away from the center.

[Cleanse] had an instantaneous duration, though, which circled back to concerns over spell durations. Applying this spell constantly multiplied the cost of this magic by a lot. [Cleanse Aura] cost 10 mana per second, and this spell would be running for 10 hours, which meant a base cost of 36,000 mana. Hopefully, by restricting a [Cleanse Aura]-like spell to the interior edge of the [Force Wall] would be enough of an area reduction that the cost would be similarly reduced.

… Or?

Maybe adding in [Cleanse] wouldn’t be that bad? Erick had put [Cleanse] into a lot of his very, very large spells, like [Withering]. The aura for [Withering], [Domain of the Withering Slime], only cost 2 mana per second. That tsunami of thick air dried out every monster in its area of effect, and then [Cleanse]ed the remains.

Still only 2 mana per second.

Maybe he had done some Wizardry there—

No! Wait. Maybe he had just tapped into the call-[Cleanse] function of the Script? Erick had put a lot of [Cleanse] into a lot of magic, actually, and not many of those spells cost as much mana as they should. [Zone of Peace] was a 24 hour long spell that turned every spell that entered into a [Cleanse] of commensurate size. It had changed a bit since Erick had received the spell back from Koyabez, but it had retained that [Cleanse] function.

Zone of Peace, instant, 24 hours, super long range, 500 MP

All magic cast inside Zone of Peace with the intent to harm, or entering a Zone of Peace with the intent to harm, is transformed into a Cleanse of commensurate size. Zone of Peace has no effect on ongoing magic.

May the peace of Koyabez enable benevolence to flourish.

[Zone of Peace] no longer had any little ‘[][][][][][]’ brackets inside of it, though.

Which brought Erick back to worrying about what Benevolence had done to Teressa. His own Benevolent spells had a bunch of those brackets inside of them but he didn’t really pay much attention to those…

Erick was not worried about his own power, or what he had made. His Gate Space had done exactly as he had wished it to do, when he made it months ago; it worked on its own to show two people the threats and boons that the world would face in the future. That automagic action did make Erick wonder about the brackets in his Benevolence spellwork, though. Was some sort of Establishing going on there? Because that’s what it had to be, right? Some sort of Establishing Paradox Wizardry, showing itself in a way that wouldn’t be known until it was actually known?

… Too big of a conundrum to solve right now.

Erick ignored those extraneous thoughts and returned to the current project.

Maybe he could put a ‘Call-[Cleanse] function’ into today’s [Hasted Hut] attempt, restrict it to a small area… at the inner edge of the [Force Wall], yes. Maybe that would be enough to keep the costs low.

Other than that…?

“Large size, big enough to fully enclose a room…” Erick held out a hand and flowed Elemental Time through his palm. The sound of the river of time burbled just out of sight, as Erick began adding in more magic. “Add in some permanency spellwork, along with VCVE Blood Magic based workings. Elemental Force, for the surroundings, and [Cleanse] restricted to a small area... delineated by [Ward]...”

His voice trailed off as Ophiels fluttered around him, taking up his music and singing along, multiplying the river into a raging torrent.

Gently holding his hand out, feeling Time flow through his fingers, Erick focused.

He spoke a simple poem to communicate his intent,

“A place of Rest,

“A Varied Haste,

“By Cleanse, be blessed

“Protected space.”

A burst of white light twisted away from his fingertips to impact a dome all around him that was not there, until it was. Power flowed into the space—

And suddenly, the rest of the world stopped, while Erick, a few Ophiel, and the part of Yggdrasil that was a part of Erick’s soul, kept going. Beyond the windows, Yggdrasil’s ever-moving green fire canopy and rainbow crown, went still. Erick glanced through the Ophiel back at home, feeling something similar to a lag as he went looking. He saw Poi stuck halfway through turning a page in a book.

Poi would be turning that page for subjective minutes.

Erick would have gone looking in other places, through other Ophiel he had left out there, but every single Ophiel inside the sphere with Erick did a minor freakout. The little guy buzzed his wings. His eyes went wide. He fluttered this way and that, banging against the barrier.

Erick moved fast, gathering them up, saying, “Hey! Hey now. Ophiel. Ophiel. Calm down, okay? Nothing happened. Nothing is happening out there.” Erick gathered an Ophiel in his arms and petted him, calming the little guy down, speaking softly, “You’re okay. Nothing is wrong.”

Ophiel rapidly calmed, though he was not happy.

Erick patted the little guy, asking, “You okay?”

Ophiel was fine. He wasn’t comfortable, but he was fine. As moments passed, turning into a calm minute, Erick sensed that Ophiel was beginning to understand his body differently. Ophiel squeaked, and Erick nodded.

“The parts of your body are still out there, but they’re hard to feel, yeah?” Erick asked.

Ophiel chirped excitedly. That was exactly it!

“I feel it too.” Erick said, “That feeling will come back when the spell ends.”

Ophiel nodded, and then he hopped out of Erick’s arms and took his place back on his shoulder, chirping in quiet violin sounds, and still-unsure guitar sounds. He would not worry.

“How about you, Yggdrasil?” Erick asked, “You okay?”

Yggdrasil’s [Scry] eye moved inside the contained space, looking around here and there, but otherwise he said nothing. He didn’t look too distressed, though. Maybe he couldn’t actually talk when Erick was like this, though?

Ah. That was exactly it.

[Telepathy] should still work, though.

Erick sent, ‘Can you hear me now, Yggdrasil?’

‘…’

Erick waited.

He waited some more.

Yggdrasil sent, ‘… I …’

Erick sent back, ‘You don’t know how to send your thoughts—’

‘… am …’

‘—fast enough. Here. Like this:’ Erick sent a packet of thoughts instead of an open connection, ‘Send a packet of thoughts like this, so that you aren’t interrupted, and so you can get through the barrier of time.’

Erick waited.

Yggdrasil sent, ‘… fine….’

More waiting.

‘… father.’

Erick waited—

A blue box slowly manifested in front of Erick, taking three seconds to fully appear.

Hasted Shelter, instant, close range, 500 + Variable

Multiply the subjective time of a large area to a variable degree.

Base version is 1 hour of subjective time in 1 minute.

500 points of damage to the barrier will break the effect. Always Restful. Always Cleansing.

Erick smiled. “Ahh! This is great! This is exactly what I wanted.” He dismissed the box, then did some quick math. “This version gives me one Script Second every 60 subjective seconds…? Yup. That’s right. Erick moved around his [Hasted Shelter], going near the walls. A faint thickness held in the air near the swirling white barrier, like a [Cleanse Aura] held tight, though it was hard to tell if there actually was a thickness in the air, or if it was just a trick of the light against the swirling white barrier beyond. “I can test this, actually.”

Crystallize Diamond X.

Erick did not cast the spell on any particular diamond, but he did target the air near the wall—

Sure enough, wind swirled inward and some of it turned into thicker air near the wall, but the part of the spell away from the wall did not cause any sort of [Cleanse] effect. Erick canceled the Particle spell before it could do much at all, and the thick air generation stopped. That was enough testing for now, though.

He canceled the [Hasted Shelter]—

It was like rising from the depths; a rapid pressure change that Erick had never experienced before on Veird, because Veird had a bunch of funky ways to remove gravity from things that should have gravity. Pressure was more or less equalized all throughout the world. But here and now was one reality of physically changing one’s experience of the world that had not been smoothed over.

Erick felt his metaphysical ears pop as the air at the edge of the space rapidly turned to flames, sending a tiny shockwave inside and outside. The burst of flames headed out didn’t matter. The one headed in bounced off of Erick like so much high speed wind.

And then it was over.

Erick giggled a bit as the unexpected danger simply did not happen—

‘Like this? Father? Am I doing it right this time?’ Yggdrasil’s information packet came in like a sledgehammer to the mind, ‘I did not know you could do information packets! This makes this so much simpler! I can talk to you super fast and you can respond, too! No need to take up hours of talking. Because I want to talk to you, father. I did not know how to say it, but I want to talk more with you. You are too busy. I want you to be home more. I know it is selfish but I want you to be home. How much can I put into this message? I only put in a thousand mana, so it shouldn’t be too much, right? Anyway. It seems I have more message space, so I am going to tell you about all the fish I saw today. And about the spider people at Holorulo. They showed me lots of nice fishes. I caught a rivergrieve, all by myself! It was great fun. The spider people like the taste of fish, too. Everyone likes to eat fish and I do not mind this but I wonder about taste. I do not taste things. I want to know what taste is. Can you help me figure out how to taste things? Also, what is sex? Why does touching penises and vaginas make people feel good? Why do people touch butts? What are the purposes of boobs? Why does Teressa want a new body with bigger boobs? Is she okay? I saw her get hurt and Aisha get hurt yesterday inside the lightning room. I saw Aisha already. She went through the Gates and went back to the House ten minutes ago. Why is Zolan and Mox touching each other at night in their rooms, but not doing sex? Both of them have had sex with other people. Why is everyone in that New Folks Home doing sex all the time? Why aren’t you doing sex with them? They joke about that sometimes. I want to read some books, I think. Can you get me some books on magic? I want to learn more about magic, like you do…’

Erick ‘read’ another twenty thousand words from Yggdrasil, but there were a lot more words than that coming out of that information packet. He tried to compartmentalize, to listen for key words and pick out everything important from Yggdrasil’s stream of consciousness, like he was trawling for goldfish among all the minnows.

There were a lot of minnows.

And Erick was not a Mind Mage.

While he was still going through the message, Erick sent to Yggdrasil, ‘Try not to spend more than ten mana on a message, at the largest. [Telepathy] is a very cost-efficient spell, giving you a minute of open communication for every single mana spent, which means every single mana is capable of giving about 150 words. Also, you should narrow your thoughts before you send them, otherwise you will send everything you are thinking, which can be a lot.’

‘Okay!’ Yggdrasil continued to send, ‘I will send smaller messages now, written concisely and with the intention of being small— Ah! A fish— Wait! I did not mean to send that. How do I unsend these messages— I am not sure I like people sexing on my branches because the New Folks Home is a lot of sexing— Darn! I didn’t mean to send that, either. Narrowing one’s thoughts is hard and…’

As Yggdrasil’s first thousand-mana message was still playing in Erick’s mind, trying to understand Yggdrasil’s second thousand-mana message was like trying to catch rain with an already-full bucket.

All Erick could truly understand was that he had messed up a lot.

Erick began writing down the topics he could pluck out of the veritable rain onto a chalkboard to the side, just so that he could visibly show to Yggdrasil that he was listening, and then he could erase those topics from the board when he had answered them. When he got to the parts about sex, and just as Erick was starting to fully comprehend what Yggdrasil had sent him, Yggdrasil’s next thousand-mana message asked all about Erick’s sex life.

Erick had a flashback to several uncomfortable conversations over a decade ago, back when Jane was still a little girl and she wondered why she had to have a sitter; why couldn’t she also go out on a ‘date’ with her father and her father’s friend from work.

… Erick decided to give Yggdrasil the sex talk, now, even though he was only… 10 months old? No. Eleven months old tomorrow—

Oh.

Rapidly, Erick realized that there was only one more month left in the year. Then came Shadow’s Feast… if Melemizargo decided to do Shadow’s Feast again this year. Hopefully he wouldn’t.

Anyway.

Yggdrasil was less than a year old, but he was very advanced for his age.

So Erick decided to have some talks with him.

After getting another 1000-mana message, the first thing Erick did was explain that he should stop doing that. Erick used calm, yet firm words, and after two more incidents, Yggdrasil finally began to send smaller messages. 10-mana messages were still around 1,400 words, badly formed, but it was a heck of a lot better than the 140,000 word monstrosities that Yggdrasil had been sending.

And then Erick began going through Yggdrasil’s concerns.

He also handled some meetings elsewhere, through Ophiel, while talking to Yggdrasil. He was getting pretty good at multitasking.

On the subject of everyone at the New Folks Home fucking all the time… Erick could just straight-up tell them, ‘no hanky panky here on Yggdrasil’, but that seemed rather puritan.

Erick was not comfortable with his kid seeing so much sex all the time, though.

… But maybe that was rather puritan of him, too.

- - - -

Erick knew what he needed to do.

He needed to send his kid off to school.

To Treehome, with the other Arbors. That had been part of the plan before the Worldly Path; before all of this Wizardry stuff got out there. If Erick had planted Yggdrasil up with the orcols, he might have already learned how to make his own small-person body, like Holy O’kabil and the other Arbors, so that he could answer his own questions about ‘what does food taste like?’.

… Or maybe Erick could learn that spell and give it to Yggdrasil?

If it was indeed a spell.

Either way, it was time to set Yggdrasil on a good life path trajectory, along with all the other stuff he had planned for the day, like to make a [Benevolent Kaleidoscopic Radiance], and ensure that Kiri and Mox were doing fine with their wide scale landscaping...

And all the other stuff that was on his schedule.

But first! This Yggdrasil issue.

- - - -

Ophiel fluttered into the offices of the castellan, in a tower attached to the atrium, where Zolan and many others were already hard at work. In five different floors, with room to expand down when needed —and it would be needed— Zolan had gotten right to work sorting out the finances of House Benevolence, Erick’s own finances, and the city work of the Gate District. Later today Zolan would directly be working on Erick’s financials, for he would be speaking with some people whom Erick had invested with over in Songli, through Clan Star Song; the spidery, with Loremaster Riri rebuilding it all from scratch, Clan Red Ledger and the hospital, through Doctor Tsung (now Patriarch Tsung), and a bunch of other, smaller places.

But for now, Zolan was speaking with some people from the Wayfarer’s Guild, about something or other. As Ophiel floated through the office, Erick rapidly caught up to the conversation after a few words; they were talking about the feasibility of opening a Gate System for their own use, all across the Crystal Forest. A local area Gate Network had been a subject which kept coming up, and which Erick kept denying, because he was not ready to support that sort of infrastructure, and they wanted a flat rate instead of a tax rate.

They were actually only talking about flat rate agreements, though; not about a local area Gate Network. But Erick could read between the lines. Zolan could read between the lines, too, and was easily knocking down their requests for flat rate shipment to be implemented everywhere; it was one small step from flat rate costs to opening up a whole bunch of other Gates everywhere, and letting the Wayfarer’s Guild take over that part of the Network.

While giving ‘control’ of local Gates to the Wayfarer’s Guild was in the cards, it would not happen for a long time. But Erick fully expected this tax problem to come to a head sooner rather than later…

The problem was manifold. One of the unexpected, major problems was that the Surface did a lot of flat rate shipping, but the Underworld did a bunch of cost-of-shippment shipping. Here, at Erick’s Gate Network, those two systems were coming into direct confrontation.

Shipments in the Underworld needed to physically move from point A to B, and they had to use caravans to get that done. Those caravans drove massive pillars of stone that floated down there, and which they defended from all oncoming monsters, and sometimes just drove straight through monster blockades instead of fighting them, bursting through half-blocked tunnels to get where they needed to go. Those caravan pillars were all the same size, but they carried vastly different riches. In a decision that was very old and had no reason to change, those caravans were taxed on the price of goods inside those shipments. And so, Erick had given Stratagold a tax-rate-based shipment agreement.

But here on the Surface, where [Teleporting Platform] and [Teleport] and other such Spatial Magics were widely used (and able to be used, unlike in the Underworld), the costs of those shipping methods were based on 250 mana per ton, or per person. Simply put, the costs of shipments on the Surface were weight-based, in almost all cases. Heavy stuff cost more to ship, but light stuff shipped rather easily.

That whole situation was, in actuality, a minor detail of how things were. These two tax rates of per-ton and per-value-of-items came into contact all the time, for everyone tried to ship over the Surface when they could, because things could move fast up here, and people shipped very, very heavy things underground when they could, because those things were weightless down there, even if it took a while to move that stuff. Shipping across the Surface oceans was a whole other nuance to the situation, where ships were weighed down with everything they could possibly carry, and then Ocean Mages worked overtime to get those massive loads across the ocean as fast as they could. These shipment complications had come into conflict a lot already, and all these problems and oddities of movement had long ago been turned into a morass of bureaucracy at every single transferal location that connected the Underworld to the Surface.

But now Erick was here.

A proper Gate Network, with absolutely no care of weight, or of the intricacies of transportation between the Surface and the Underworld or across oceans, was a game changer…

It all came down to this simple fact: the choices made by Erick, and the people here, would have ripple effects across the entire world. They would, eventually, be deciding how goods got moved from place to place, and the costs of those movements. It was a large burden of choice, and of opportunity.

… Maybe he should join the conversation with the Wayfarer’s Guild—

Ah.

But then he’d never get to all the other things he needed to do. Every single day was like this; Erick needed to be involved in these small, extremely widespread decisions. But! He had hired good people.

And so, he let Zolan work; it’s why he hired the man. It was why he hired everyone here, and why the people he hired had hired others.

Erick moved Ophiel onward.

He passed the office where Zolan was meeting with the Wayfarer’s Guild.

Ophiel fluttered through the office, up a staircase, and transformed into a facsimile of Erick before he came into sight of other people. He was still a [Familiar] made of white feathers and eyes and such, but with a proper use of Erick’s own [Pristine Benevolence] Ophiel did a decent impersonation. There were still some stray feathers all across ‘Erick’s’ whole entire ‘body’, though. It was fine.

He stopped and knocked on the open door of the financials room.

Iloya was in residence, along with a few new hires from Candlepoint. Iloya was practically Zolan’s second-in-command, which Erick was fine with. She was a tall, pale pink incani woman, with vibrantly white hair and horns that curved backward with multiple points. She wore a normal pantsuit, but of high quality. A lot of people had noticed ‘Erick’ walking through the office, but no one commented. Some people didn’t even see him, for they were too focused on their own work.

Iloya had managed to retain most of her previous life’s mana sense, though, so she saw Erick coming well before he got there. She was the only one in the financials room looking toward the door and bowing as Erick walked in, though the other two fresh hires were quick to follow her direction. Iloya and the other two had been standing over a table filled with paperwork.

Iloya rose from her bow, and asked, “What can I do for you, my king?”

Erick liked Iloya. She had been one of Erick’s medium picks for the various Overseer positions, and she would have gotten along well with Burhendurur in the Office of Enforcement, which was where Erick had initially placed her, but Zolan had used his very first pick to get Iloya here, under him, into the Castellan’s Office.

It was for the best, Erick supposed.

Because when Erick asked, “I need to see about getting Yggdrasil planted at Treehome, so he can grow up around other Arbors. Failing that, I want to put another Gate Set up there, or maybe a smaller, single Gate, so that they can all talk with each other. The point is to expose Yggdrasil to other Arbors, however it has to happen.”

Iloya had no problems at all, instantly, saying, “I will get a meeting with a real representative of Treehome within the hour, and this time they will not be [Force Walling] us. Will you be discussing shipping, or will this be a meeting purely for the introduction of Yggdrasil to Arbor society? They don’t seem to care about shipping, though that could be a front, but they will definitely respond to a request to teach Yggdrasil.”

“Keep it open ended. I have my goal of getting Yggdrasil introduced to the Arbors, and they can have their goals be whatever.”

“Your will be done, my king.”

“Also, I want a report on the intricacies of switching the Network to flat rate per tonnage shipment costs, both the Underworld Gates, and the Surface Gates. It’ll be a decision that shapes the whole world, Iloya, so take your time with it. Consult whoever you have to consult.”

“I have that report ready for you already.” Iloya said, “Zolan and I both considered that you might need it, and so, we made it. We also have some words in here about a full shift to value-rate shipment, too.” She walked over to a filing cabinet, pulled it out, and instantly grabbed the file she was looking for, amongst all the others. She handed it over to Ophiel, saying, “This debate is a long one, stemming back a literal millennium, though it has always been mostly theoretical. Now that we actually have a Gate Network, those theories are being refined. This was updated two days ago.”

Ophiel took the report and Erick smiled. “Thank you. Good work. Inform Poi if the time table changes; either way, I will be expecting a call in an hour.”

“Your will be done, my king.”

Erick had mostly ignored the other two people in the room with Iloya, for they were new and he didn’t want to scare them, but now he looked to them, saying, “Glad to see you two working on the numbers. Barlashi, Prudincia; welcome to the team.” He turned back to Iloya and nodded.

And then he left.

Barlashi and Prudincia both briefly looked star struck, but Iloya brought them back to attention, giving them a few commands about whatever it was they were doing before she could work on Erick’s new commands.

‘Whatever they were doing’ looked like in-depth explanations of the financials of the Gate District and how everything was tracked, and where the established bookkeeping methodology that Zolan and Iloya brought to the table had been incompatible with what Prudincia had done to the books.

Iloya was from Oceanside, and was 122 when she came to House Benevolence and got a [Reincarnation] to become 21 again, so she knew this sort of job inside and out, but Barlashi and Prudincia were both former shadelings from Candlepoint. They were also well over a hundred years old, but they had been shadelings most of that time. It wasn’t till they came to Candlepoint and regained sapience, though, that they became real people again. After that, both of them went for Melemizargo’s [Reincarnation]. Now they were a shifter owl man and a human woman, respectively. They had tried to leave Candlepoint and get back to their old lives, but those lives were gone, and they had been chased back here.

They had languished for a time at Candlepoint, living in the proverbial gutters (down in the slums in the sewers, actually) because both of them were good with numbers, and not much else, and Candlepoint didn’t need much of that right now.

And now they were here, clean, and well-dressed, both of them getting back into the wonderful mundanity of office work. They were happy, and Erick was glad for that. They also seemed to be rather good at their jobs, but what they knew and what the Office of the Castellan required of them were two different things.

Iloya had been instructing them before Erick had come in and dropped a new task on them. This was all a work in progress, though, and this was not the first time Erick had interrupted them, nor would it be the last.

... Erick briefly considered if it was time to introduce computers to the office.

Iloya and Zolan would probably love making spreadsheets on a laptop. Jane’s computers had to have Excel, or something similar, right? If not, then someone could probably learn to write code, or something… How hard could it be?

Probably rather hard, if Jane’s computer didn’t have any actual computer writing software— Ah! Could they go bad? Like, could the computers actually break? Even if they were just sitting around in protected spots, under preservation [Ward]s?

Hmm.

Erick had [Duplicate]d Jane’s laptop a dozen times and hid them in many different places.

They would keep for a long time.

No need to introduce computers, anyway.

Not right now.

Later, though? A year? Two years?

Whatever the case, if there was some sort of bottleneck with learning how to work a computer and learning how to build more computers, or make code, then Erick could simply give a few promising people Intelligence and let them keep trying. Later, though. Maybe next year? Halfway through next year.

Yes. That sounded fine.

- - - -

Erick came back to himself, sitting in his warehouse. It was time to make another spell while he waited for Treehome to get back to him. It was time to make a spell to grow Elemental Benevolence.

A Rift-type spell!

Erick had a few Rift spells already, but he did not have a Rift spell for Benevolence. A lot of his spells had changed when he solidified Elemental Benevolence, but [Kaleidoscopic Radiance] was not one of them.

Kaleidoscopic Radiance, instant, medium range, permanent, 500 mana

A medium-sized lightward of evershifting brilliance supports the growth of Light Essence creatures.

That spell had come about the last time Erick had made a dungeon; specifically the Light Dungeon over at Oceanside. It was one of his first real successes with permanency-type magic, combining a Particle understanding of light, and the natural permanency of [Ward]. He hadn’t been purposefully trying to make that spell, though. It had simply happened after casting the same sort of lightward over and over and over.

Essence growth spells for Fire, Water, Stone, and Air, were rather simple things. They were just Rifts that opened a minor tear into the element of choice, allowing that element to spill out into the world. Of course, back at Oceanside, that’s not how they taught Erick or the rest of the dungeoneering class. They had stuck to making plain dungeons, without the use of Rifts.

Putting Rifts inside dungeons was actually rather dangerous, which is why they didn’t teach that sort of thing to first year students. When [Kaleidoscopic Radiance] had happened, and Erick offered to cast that spell into the Light Dungeon, Kirginatharp had explicitly told him not to; it was hard to control slime growth when actual essence rifts were put into a dungeon. Those sorts of things were only to be used sparingly, if at all.

The best way to make a dungeon was the natural way. That’s how Mox and her people had made all of Erick’s current dungeons.

Wind whistled through carefully crafted pipes in the Air dungeon. Water trickled through many different rivers inside the Water dungeon. Everything was dry and stoney in the Stone dungeon, with piles of dirt everywhere. Fire burned brightly in long rows in the Fire dungeon. Shadows even crawled in the Shadow dungeon, aided by sparing bits of lightwork here and there. And not a single one of Erick’s dungeons had a Rift. That would lead to oozes, no doubt.

But there would be, perhaps, one Rift inside the Benevolence dungeon. Just one!

Just to see if it worked at all.

Erick had a think.

Benevolence was already inside several of his spells, Established to be that way at his creation of that Element.

Exalted Rain Aura, instant, super long range, 1 MP per second ~{Favored Spell}~

Anoint the land with blessed rain, rapidly growing all desired plants and restoring vibrancy to the soil. If used upon prepared fields for a full day, highly nutritious Erick Beans will sprout.

Particle Mage Only

Blessing of Empathy, instant, touch, 1500 mana

Let benevolence fill the soul, so that one might better understand others.

Blessing magnifies when committing harm.

[Exalted Rain Aura], which was usually shortened to [Exalted Rain] when people spoke of that spell, had a lot of Benevolence in it according to Rozeta. The [Blessing of Empathy] which Erick had gotten back from Koyabez looked a lot different than the one that Erick had created, himself, though; there was some Establishing there, for sure. Erick recalled what the original spell used to look like.

Blessing of Empathy, 30 seconds, Sound + Understanding + Acceptance, 1500 mana

Blessing magnifies when harm is committed.

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

All those little brackets had filled in, but more than that, all the normal parts of what it took to get someone to accept the Blessing, were gone. Now, Erick could just hit someone with this spell and force them to experience empathy. He had been able to do the same thing with the Crystal Star, too, back when he had that artifact, so Koyabez had gotten involved in that Establishing, too… Perhaps?

Eh. Who knew!

Anyway!

It was time to make a new spell, and suddenly, Erick realized exactly what it would look like, and how it would act. The dungeon Mox had made for Benevolence was both a tower, and a large pit, for no one was quite sure what a Benevolence dungeon needed to work.

But Erick knew; in a flash of inspiration, he knew.

Ophiels danced around Erick as he plotted out his magic. One of the Ophiels got the sound of Benevolence; the overarching sound of growth and plenty, and the distant sound of thunder. That Ophiel began to jolt a bit with [Pristine Benevolence], raising that song to new heights.

Another Ophiel got the sound of [Exalted Rain Aura], the sound of the rain cycle manifesting, and of Benevolence and growth. Oddly enough, [Grow] and Benevolence sounded a lot alike, but they were not exactly the same. They simply complemented each other.

Another Ophiel got [Kaleidoscopic Radiance]; it was the sound of light and growth, but slightly different than that. It was a Rift, but a rather primitive one. Something that could be built upon.

Like adding more voices to the choir, Erick sounded out a song of growth, and rain, and light. He worked Particle ideas into it all, ensuring that real, true things would come out of this working, and that those real things would fall down and gather, ensuring growth, spurred on by light from above. The spell itself would be contained, it would not violate the Propagation Ban, but the things it produced would spread far and wide—

“Ah,” Erick said, realizing what he was doing, while in the middle of casting, “It’s terraforming.”

Lightning crashed out of Erick like a branch of Yggdrasil touching the world.

That lightning transformed the air of the warehouse, striking deep into Benevolence. Briefly, Erick saw his own Gate Space beyond that strike, but then the world crashed inward and the spell became something more controlled. Something more subdued.

Gentle iridescent sparks held in the air like lightning moving inside an invisible, airy thing.

Air tried to gather, tried to flow through the space, trying to gather something of a minor storm.

But nope. The warehouse was sealed. This area was technically halfway to Fae Space, too. Erick doubted he would even see such an opening into Benevolence if he cast this spell out on Veird, closer to the real world.

Flickering, mostly-silent lightning tried to collect into a cloud, but all it could do was bounce around in a thirty-meter wide, roughly-spherical space. There was no wind to gather, therefore there was no magic to rain down. Erick would need to cast this in a much, much more open space, if he wanted to see it—

A blue box appeared.

Terraforming, instant, super long range, permanent, 10,000 mana

Anoint the land with endless bounty.

Supports the growth of all life, but especially life attuned to Elemental Benevolence.

Wanes and waxes according to resources and demands.

Erick canceled the spell in front of him, for, as it said, there were no demands here and no resources to meet those demands. Besides! He didn’t want this sort of spell inside his warehouse, anyway.

Light and lightning fizzled out of the air.

[Terraforming] wouldn’t do well here, but this spell would be great elsewhere. Erick got a move on, for it was time to visit Mox and Kiri and see about getting that Benevolence Dungeon up and running. Maybe he’d have time to settle that whole thing before Iloya got back to him about Treehome.

- - - -

Erick had Ophiel walk over to the Office of the Exterior.

It was a tower just as large as all the other Overseer towers, but it was emptier than most. The Office of the Exterior didn’t have a whole lot to do these days, but eventually they would.

There was a single paper shaper working in the main financial room.

Farazi was a human man of rather good looks from Ar’Cosmos. He had not always looked this good, or this happy. Farazi was one of the few half dragons who had been so messed up by their mutative heritage that when he took a dunk in the Renewal Tank, he had come out as something completely unexpected. Apparently, Farazi had been genetically/spiritually/Erick-didn’t-want-to-get-into-his-personal-life a woman. Farazi had been expecting this, though, and put up with his new body for only as long as it took for him to meet with Erick. All of this came out in that first meeting, where Farazi asked for a proper [Reincarnation] in that very same meeting. After his oath of office, Erick settled Farazi into the body that he actually wanted. Erick would have done it without the oath, but since Farazi had been on a track to become part of Erick’s House, the oath had been required.

The guy practically beamed with joy as Ophiel-as-Erick walked into the financials room. Farazi rapidly rose from his seat and bowed, saying, “Sir!”

“What’s the schedule for Mox, Tasar, and Kiri today?”

Erick could just do an Imaging to find them, or he could ask Poi, but he wanted to check up on his people whenever he could, and Farazi was good people. Besides, all of his targets could be deep underground somewhere.

Farazi walked over to a different desk, glanced at the paperwork there, then said, “Overseer Mox is testing Miss Flamecrash’s talents with land transformation on the western side of the lake. Later, they will come back here and plan out the hundred-kilometer landscaping of the lands around the lake.”

“Thank you,” Erick said. “How goes the Office of the Overseer?”

With a brightness to his whole self, Farazi said, “We’ve settled on the structure of the organization and how it will handle future problems. Since yesterday’s events with Overseer Aisha and Miss Rednail, and due to people finding out about those, we have gotten some small inquiries for the establishing of cities under your aegis. Mox does not consider them realistic inquiries, but she is following up with them and I’m preparing some initial reports on the matter. Would you care to look over those proposals?”

New people? New cities!

Ha!

Erick hadn’t expected that to start happening for at least a year!

“That’s great news! I would like to go over them— I can’t right now.” Erick said, “I’m working on the Benevolence dungeon, and I think I have a spell that will fix our lack of Benevolence Essence. I have to do that. Good work, Farazi. I’ll read those reports later.”

Farazi bowed.

Ophiel departed.

- - - -

Ophiel descended on the western side of the lake. It did not take much time at all to find Kiri, Tasar, and Mox. About 25 kilometers from the lakeside, the three women stood on one of Tasar’s [Teleporting Platform]s, while Kiri’s [Familiar] danced across the land ahead. Nine Sunnys formed a line, each separated from the other by ten meters, as they flew across the land like rainbow soil tillers, roiling desert dunes into something more arable.

Their [Stoneshape]s ripped the granular sands of the desert into something finer, to make silt and even some clay. The process by which one transformed desert sands into soil was a thing that the people of Spur and other Crystal Forest cities had long since figured out, though they were usually only able to make the land fruitful for short stretches of time before the mimics came back and began fucking with the soil composition again.

Crystal mimics truly were an insidious problem.

Not only did they eat and destroy all green life, they fucked up the ground itself! Everywhere the mimics went, good soil turned to lifeless sand. It was more than just taking all the organics out of the soil, too. Mimics killed the land—

Well. They certainly changed the land so that only certain types of life could exist on that land. Perhaps ‘kill’ was too strong a word. They certainly did kill all green life, though! All it really took to fix the damage done by mimics, though, was keeping the mimics away, and using some mana to fix the smaller, hard-to-see problems.

Ophiel made a show of descending onto the platform, but all three women saw Erick long before Ophiel actually made himself apparent. The three women stopped what they were doing.

Erick spoke as Ophiel got close, “I made a Benevolence Essence growth spell. It should work for the Benevolence dungeon. Is it ready?”

Tasar blinked, dumbfounded. Kiri smiled.

Mox paused; the Benevolence dungeon was mostly ready. She asked, “What sort of spell?”

Erick handed over the blue box. All three women eyed it, with Tasar’s eyes briefly going wider, and then she stopped all that, seeming to ask herself why she was still amazed at Erick’s accomplishments. Kiri just smiled.

Erick explained, “[Terraforming] makes a large-sized lightning cloud. I’m gonna put it at the top of the tower and it’ll rain platinum rain as needed, cascading all the way down the tower. I imagine it’ll fill the pit beside the tower with water and then probably stop there.”

Mox put the blue box away, saying, “I’ll need a few hours. Rework the flows. Add some waterways. Prep for plant growth. Make sure it won't collapse under all that added weight and that the pit can fill in with water without undermining everything else. With Kiri’s help it’ll be done by noon.”

That was fine by Erick. He said, “Go ahead and pull some people from Aisha’s office, too, if you have to.”

“Your will be done, my king,” Mox said.