Part 16 - Gearing Up

  Elizabeth’s time with the goddess was like a revelation for her. Her divine blessing was an immediate improvement to her focus, as well as a complete overhaul of her understanding of Pallos.

  She could draw in information that would normally create a chaotic mess, and then process it all in an organized fashion that outright shocked her. It made the information overload of seeing mana around her a complete treat to categorize and decipher.

  She’d begun identifying each strand of mana and listing in her head what elements each color corresponded to. Then she could scan over people to decipher elements and a rough idea of the levels of each elemental mana within that person, giving her a tool to add to her [Identify] with and view extra details on the people around her.

  Fully refreshed after a long soak, she was eager to run a few errands before the planned big meeting to update their mission details.

  Her most important stop was with the [Weaver] that ran the base’s armor production.

  Elizabeth knocked on the open doorway and headed inside without waiting for a reply.

  Sorana was deep in her work, weaving intricate patterns into the latest batch of armor for the facility operatives. Her fingers danced in the air, not touching anything as a pair of needles tipped with tiny gems hovered back and forth in the air, tracing arcane runes in the air as the fabrics stitched into matching shapes.

  Elizabeth quietly stalked by, poking her head into the room containing their joint project with the [Blacksmith] that handled weaponry in the lab a few rooms down.

  A line of solid metal boxes were arrayed across the counter as the sound of hammering metals resounded from the next room over, nearly shaking the room that separated the two [Artisan]’s workshops. Each box was responsive to Elizabeth’s touch as she grazed her hand across each one in sequence. The first contained her nascent idea of growing diamonds through a simulation of Earth’s CVD process. The next was a process to grow rubies, then emeralds and finally her attempt to observe conjured gemstones that couldn’t hold skills.

  Each attempt was really a mock-up of the process, using the closest approximation of various substances like methane gas for the diamonds, or aluminum oxide for the rubies. Every box was divided into chambers with differing conditions, each stabilized by runes etched into the surfaces to prevent problems.

  Conjured material made by [Mages] and other classers would break down slightly over time, causing structural flaws when used to make stone for buildings, or when used to make metal for weapons, and any classer with [Gemstone Conjuration] couldn’t make a huge fortune by simply conjuring the gemstones on repeat for thousands of potent skills to be stored away.

  The problems were stacking inefficiencies as well.

  A typical person of Pallos wouldn’t have any knowledge of the periodic table or the chemical structures involved in the atomic makeup of a gemstone. According to her recent soak with the goddess, Liz was a special case in which some exceptions were made about what knowledge she could bring from Earth. Most individuals would have ‘harmful knowledge’ pruned from their memories before being reincarnated. Not only was she not reincarnated, but she’d been allowed to keep her memories due to the lack of damaging information she had, and that Seira would personally be keeping tabs on her.

  The only advanced knowledge Liz had to bring from Earth was the deep level of familiarity she had with the process of making and cutting jewels from her father. As soon as she’d been introduced to the facility [Artisans] she had come up with the idea to round out their gemstone reserves, given several months of time.

  The next issue for natives of Pallos was the crystalline structure involved. Liz hadn’t heard of anyone inventing a microscope, and therefore, most knowledge was the result of skills or the intensive research of high level immortals.

  Even with her advanced knowledge, she had no idea if the process of growing gemstones would have the same issues as [Gemstone Conjuration] or not. Her knowledge would be extremely helpful in creating her own rough stones for non-magical use, but if she could create a process to mimic the natural growth of a gemstone—with a massive assumption that there wasn’t something unique about Pallos that made natural gemstones attain their elemental properties for holding skills—then she could have the foundations for a massive wealth.

  The [Blacksmith]—by the name of Anders—was a man with flaming red hair and a tall, muscular build showing his career was most likely a family trade, and he was using Metal and Lava elements to create the chambers and moderate the heat levels.

  Sorana was the mastermind behind the delicate process of restricting the components that Liz had described in detail to prevent from ruining the processes she was hoping to recreate. The [Weaver] had the mind of a genius with a comprehensive education from some school on a flying island. The woman claimed to be a wizard with knowledge of multiple styles of runic language mastered to a Gold proficiency, whatever that meant.

  Liz trusted them both to handle their own crafts, and to contribute to her new project.

  However, now one thing had changed for her.

  She could now see mana with her Seira’s divine blessing. Meaning that she could watch for changes in the gems as they progressed. The mission timing was rather unfortunate, given she would lose out.

  Each of the projects involved a small seed of the gemstone they desired. Even at the early phases, she could identify the nascent lights of the various elements of the seed metals by the colored pinpricks of light within each. Careful observation could’ve allowed her to study the growth of the mana attributes within each gem, but she’d have to settle for waiting until she returned to check again. She even found herself wishing she had a method of recording the value into some identifiable quantity to reflect upon later.

  [*ding* [Identify] has evolved to the General Skill [An Eye for Detail]!]

  With a start, she almost jumped out of her skin at the sudden notification. There was a reason she’d turned down the notification sound when she received them. Even with the reduced intrusiveness, she was used to her thoughts being quiet, and she couldn’t stand how loud they’d been when she first arrived.

  She shook her head as she read over the description of the upgraded skill.

  [An Eye for Detail: You have both an intense desire for detailed information, as well as the ability to perceive details not available to most. With this skill, quantify those details and define the data into useful measurements!]

  Liz actually didn’t know how to take that information. It was what sounded like a fantastic upgrade and also vague enough to be hard to get a read on.

  [60% Fantastic Upgrade, 40% Vagueness]

  She let out a small groan as she realized the system was going to troll her endlessly with the new skill.

  She turned her eyes to Sorana, who was stretching like a housecat in her chair just on the other side of the workshop doorway. She narrowed her eyes as she studied the woman with the new skill.

  [Artisan - Wood (Lv389), Arcanite (Lv217)]

  To her eyesight alone, the woman had two orbs within her body, one that had a perfect woody texture to it that had a nascent light within and then another with a white faceted appearance that glinted with a smaller amount of energy.

  She finally could put together what the lights were. She’d guessed early on that the blessing was telling her the elements an individual had, but the different brightness levels of the orbs within each person hadn’t told her much, though she’d been guessing it was the amount of magic the class contained. She could’ve smacked herself in the forehead at her own stupidity. The light was representative of the level of the class.

  She strode over to Sorana and smiled at the middle-aged woman. In truth, depending on the amount of Vitality involved, the woman could’ve been decades older than she looked. Her hair still had the full and lustrous black color of a young woman, and her face had no real signs of age, but her aura was like that of a learned woman, and Liz knew one of the woman’s children was one of the younger Operatives out on mission at the time.

  “Hey Sorana! How are things?” Liz cast her gaze to the completed Runic Fabric outfit sitting on the desk.

  “Lizha, thanks for keeping quiet. You know how I get when I’m focused. Everything is great! I just finished a new sequence in this section, and it’ll purify sweat actively while the wearer is at full mana. It should reduce issues with the heat putting burdens on the cleaning sequence!” Sorana was fairly animated about her new work, and held up the fabric for her to study.

  Liz narrowed her eyes as she inspected the cloth, then glanced in the [Weaver]’s direction, an unspoken question on her face.

  “Go ahead.”

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  She reached out and sent a trickle of mana into the fabric, gasping as her new blessing allowed her to study the intricacies of the runes across the fabric bodysuit. Instead of heavy plates of metal, the fabric had strengthening runes and shield sequences woven in all over the most critical areas of the body. The sum total of the armor on the user’s mana was quite high when fully active, but for those who valued dexterity, it was an unparalleled work of functional art.

  “Actually, Lizha, this suit should be your backup, if I’m not mistaken. That’s why it has a sequence across the spine here.” Sorana pointed to the arcanite laden runes down the spine of the suit. “Try willing the runes to pull from the stored arcanite!”

  Liz did as requested, watching as the suit jumped in the air and folded itself up, condensed down to a fraction of the size she’d ever expect to see something that thick reduced to. It was like seeing the fabric vacuum sealed back on Earth.

  “Go ahead and keep that stored with your things, I’m glad I got it ready in time. Your main suit is fully customized already, and I have it on the shelf over… there!” Sorana pointed at a similar black suit with red stitching all over it.

  Liz could tell from the mana sight of her blessing that the suit had far more arcanite stones woven into the actual fabric, and was studded with tiny spaces for skill gemstones all over the body, though the pockets were empty. The red stitching was some special thread meant to cover up the arcanite threads that made up the runes of the entire primary suit.

  She scooped up the outfit and was stunned by how heavy it was, though the fabric was softer than any microfiber she’d felt back on Earth.

  “Try it on!” Sorana ushered her behind a changing screen and quickly revealed the hidden straps to tighten down each part of the body.

  “Compared to the backup, which is minimalist and meant for repairing itself and keeping all of you looking presentable, this outfit is absolutely no nonsense. Every limb has strengthening runes and various utility runes. The neckline can be pulled up and unrolled to create a facemask with a sequence to provide air if you’re caught underwater or some shitter is trying to suffocate you. The feet have sticky enchantments to let you walk on walls or ceilings. Invisibility is inscribed into some part of the suit to disguise it as normal clothing. As I explained to you before, each piece is woven from Arcanite thread. The rune on the back of the neck is the mending rune, and most of the enchantments will recharge when the arcanite does, but any excess stress on the enchantments will cause them to be spent faster.”

  Sorana gave a lengthy rundown as Liz did her best to reach every strap and seam without assistance. Once she had the suit on, she tried out a few of the enchantments for a brief test. The ‘incognito mode’ she’d requested was meant to help her when she had to attend the ball in a party dress. The upper sleeves turned translucent to leave the appearance of long black gloves, inscribed with beautiful patterns while the torso and bottoms turned into lace-trimmed undergarments that Liz had requested, with long matte black leggings to match the gloves.

  She was quite pleased with the look, and it would fit well under her traveling clothes and any other outfit she needed. With the cleaning and mending runes, she could count on the outfit to hold up for her first foray into the wider Pallos.

  “I’m really amazed by this! I thought my requests would be a bit too difficult, but you delivered on it all.” She tested out a few brief moves, nothing that would cause damage, then changed subject. “So, how about our other project? Anything of note so far?”

  “Well, it’s your brainchild. We can't see the insides of the cases to check without ruining the internal compositions. Your ability to feel through tremors in the ground are all we have for progress. As far as things are from my perspective, no, no issues at all. I’ve replaced every rune as needed. Anders has been handling temperatures as you requested as well.”

  Liz nodded along. “Just be careful not to open them early. The process takes months to begin with, and that’s assuming I’ve not forgotten anything since my father taught me.”

  “He must’ve been an amazing man! This entire idea is so well researched, I can’t believe I’ve not heard of him before. He could teach classes at the School for sure! Assuming this works.” Sorana chuckled slightly at the last part.

  Liz could only frown, a sigh passing her lips as she let her feelings sort themselves out rapidly before she smiled. “The conditions here are a little different from back home. So long as the mana saturation doesn’t change anything, then it should work.” Half of what she said was complete bluster.

  The issue was that she might not have conveyed the information on the substances to omit from their chambers properly. If the wrong substances were exposed to the gems during growth, then they’d be full of inclusions that could ruin the stones’ purity.

  That wouldn’t necessarily be a failure, but if they could conduct skills the way they should, they’d have to be processed by a Gemstone classer before use anyway, so some inclusions might not prove catastrophic.

  The issue she foresaw were minute details like the difference between sapphires and rubies. She’d wanted to tear her hair out when she first started learning about gemstones for each element. She just didn’t have a good reason for why different colorations of corundum would produce similar gemstones in almost every way and yet rubies would hold Fire skills and sapphires would hold the advanced Ocean element skills. It made no sense. She suspected someone had gone through and played some number of tricks on her just to frustrate her.

  “It still bothers me. Some gemstones are extremely common, and therefore you can find skill gems for all sorts of things, right? But then some elements get exceedingly rare stones like hauyne for Poison? Not every element is created equal, obviously, but isn't it a little strange at times?” Liz groused a bit about her continued problems.

  “Sure, but isn’t that the point of your project? If you could grow gems like you described, then you’d have an incredible source of wealth and power. Just take what you can get.” Sorana patted her shoulder in a consoling gesture.

  “Right…” Lis let out another sigh. “Back to this custom Runic Weave. Thank you for leaving out the parts I asked you to.” Liz held up her left hand, which had miniscule perforations at the knuckles for her to conjure weapons of stone from without tearing the fabric. Her feet also had exposed spaces on the balls of her feet, allowing her to keep in contact with the ground to maintain her Earth element-related perception skills.

  “Of course! I’m just happy to provide a unique piece of handiwork. I always felt so stifled working on everyday clothing back in the city, so working on unique things suits me better. Now, about your ball gown…”

  Liz allowed herself to be dragged along to the blacksmithing workshop beyond her gemstone test area, where a floating metal teapot was pouring into three glasses before they’d even crossed the threshold.

  “Just a moment, ladies!” Anders could be heard shouting from the forge nearby over the ringing sound that wasn’t dampened enough by the runes at each doorway.

  Before long, the ringing stopped and the man stepped out, rolling his shoulders and bowing gently as they all took seats at the table with the tea. His head of red hair was the same shade as his Lava element eyes. His smile was radiant as he beamed at Liz.

  “Lizha, I’ve got the final accessories for your dress ready as of two days ago. You said you’d provide your own jewelry, but I decided to take the chance to make some extra options.”

  Multiple display cases flew out from the storage shelves as they all sipped at their tea, and Liz paused as she winced over the jewelry being mentioned. She could admit she was still sore about the things she’d made with her father’s help.

  She began to look over the small pieces of jewelry, noting the arcanite woven into the chains of some of the pieces, seeing a small wink from Sorana at the same time.

  “I know, the jewelry doesn’t hold a candle to the quality and purity of the pieces you brought with you. But I must advise you to bring as much arcanite as you can carry. It’ll save your life. You’re the one in the most direct danger during this mission, and we don’t do things by halves. Plus, if you die, I won’t know how this experiment of yours will end up!”

  Liz gave him a wry grin. “I know, but you are the ones who told me not to store extra arcanite inside my body.”

  The both of them paled the same as they had the first time she’d mentioned it.

  “What, seriously, why is this such a problem?”

  Sorana laid a hand on her arm. “Arcanite with enough quantity to be useful is expensive. My threads can make a large amount stretch out for a long while! But if it’s inside of you, healing skills like the ones in the gemstones you’ll be taking with you will erase the foreign matter from inside your body. Permanently erasing that much arcanite from existence is a very expensive loss.”

  “Alright, I get it.” She shrugged as she realized she had almost no sense for the money system in Pallos. She carried some emergency coins in her bodily storage, but she had no intention to carry a huge amount of wealth within her own body. Technically, any passive healing aura with enough Magic Power could instantly ‘restore’ her body to the healing eidos image she had. Technically, for her, that meant the state she’d first arrived in, stone and all.

  “So, when can I finally see this dress?”

  “At the Ball on the day of the mission, of course. I’ll not have anyone spoil my grand designs early! I guarantee it’ll fit, so don’t worry so much!” Anders reached over to give her a slap on the back, which only had her slightly annoyed by the amount of dirt on his hands. She wasn’t a fan of physical contact, and while she could bear it most days, she was not interested in suffering a dirty hand stain on her back while wearing her new outfit from Sorana.

  She immediately activated the cleansing runes in the suit to test them out. Sadly, she couldn’t see her back to know if it worked.

  She could only sit and enjoy the tea with the two [Artisans] for the remainder of her free time before she had to attend the meeting.

  Suddenly, as if to serve as an alarm for the meeting time, the entire facility shook with the power of a small earthquake.

  ~ ~ ~

  Aegis and Jayce were waiting near the entrance to the facility when she arrived, fully geared up and ready for a fight.

  Instead, there were strangers in black and red armor and clothing coming through the entrance to the facility escorted by a pair of the higher level guards.

  [Leader - Sound (Lv428), Crucible (Lv256)]

  The oldest of the newcomers was a greying man who wore a flowing toga and sandals like he was from Rome, except instead of white, he wore vibrant reds over blacks.

  He had the clear signs of being a vampire, and she was almost pitying him for being turned so late in his lifespan as to be an eternal elderly person.

  [Mage - Mirage (Lv768), Sound (Lv760), Spatial (Lv706)]

  Immediately over the old man’s shoulder was the projected image of a plain man, while a trail of mana led from the image to a hidden invisible person bearing the [An Eye for Detail] reading she’d just gotten by piercing the invisibility with her blessing.

  The image was wearing red and black armor of incredible quality, with an arsenal of little mana signatures inside his armor denoting a massive quantity of gemstones, all layered with armor packing more Arcanite than she’d ever seen in one place before.

  She barely had time to think over the sheer incredible nature of such a high level individual before the moment had swept her by.

  “Senator Ignatius. It has been so long,” Jayce spoke first, showing deference to a person who was clearly a foreign dignitary with a foreign salute.

  “Lord Jayce, it has been… roughly ten years? I wish we had the time to catch up longer, but given the circumstances we just experienced, we will need to leave soon on foot.”

  “I understand. These spatial tremors are worse than I’d heard.”

  Liz felt her heart nearly stop.

  She’d thought an attack was coming, but instead it was a spatial tremor?

  It began to hit her how dire the world’s situation was at that point.

  Eight more individuals entered the facility wearing similar armor to the extremely high level man, all of them armed to the teeth and fully prepared for a fight. Liz tensed as she didn’t have time to assess each person before the conversation swept on.

  “These are the Ranger team members accompanying me on this trip. And this is-”

  He didn’t get to finish.

  “Greetings. I'm Sentinel Magic.”