Down in the Dungeon, Doyle turned to Ally, “Will that actually work?”
Ally shrugs, “That’s a little outside of my knowledge. The previous thing? That was pure hospitality. The kind even my fellow Fae respect.
“This? It’s some mix of system and ritual. Names and hospitality. Plus a few extra bits, I’m sure. Oh, and while “Hospitality” tends to be somewhat universal? What they’re playing with stems more from this planet’s myths.”
And speaking of something from the planet’s myths, the Mage Tower is in the middle of something.
Down in the basement is a circle drawn on the floor. A perfect circle, though with skills this is less impressive than it might have been before the system. Still impressive to a certain degree, though.
Around the circle is another much rougher circle made from salt. Technically. In reality, the salt is mixed with a neutral base material to bulk it up. If this was an attempt at summoning something, that would be a terrible idea. Instead, it simply makes the circle more of a suggestion and an illusion of protection.
The three people gathered around the circle know this though, which is why the salt is on the outside and not the inside. Better to have the “salt” visible, but not touchable so the illusion of defense has a chance to mean something.
As for why they needed such a basic protection circle, without even any runes? They were dealing with spirits of a sorts.
Nothing to do with the dead, but rather more on the side of nature spirits. The only problem? There isn’t any. At least, not yet. The system only put everything back together after the magic wave reduced everything to sub-particles. It didn’t place spirits.
Though more than just a nature spirit, this trio was looking for a wind spirit. A spirit type that would have formed nowhere on the planet yet. Well, there was a slim chance, but certainly not around Wolf’s Rest.
Still, they were trying. Seems someone had dug up a new-age magic somewhere and they were working their way through it.
So the trio lit candles, performed chants, and generally just tried to think inviting thoughts.
Nothing happened.
The expected result and so as they cleaned up the little bit of wax that had fallen off the candles and swept up the “salt” circle, the trio were actually happy. As much as they would have been ecstatic to actually call something.
Not summon, call. If it had been an attempt to summon, they might have succeeded. After all, even if this planet didn’t have spirits of the air yet, there were more than enough “on-call”, as it were. From the lowest to, well, not the highest, but certainly a few of the upper tier of spirits will be lazing around, waiting to be summoned for some fun.
The three report the results of their ritual to someone perched on a stool in front of a giant book, mostly blank except for line after line of tight, precise observations.
After listening to the trios report, he writes down a few lines.
[
Air spirit calling ritual - successful ignition, skill experience gained, ritual completed, results in a feeling of no one being there to answer the call and not something ignoring or turning down the call.
]
Above that are similar notations in Earth and Water, with only Fire being left to try of the classic four. There was also a section that somewhat overlapped these entries, but for the Eastern five elements including a double entry of metal and gold.
Down in the basement, a new group of three people are preparing for the next ritual. The major difference is that they have more candles than the last group.
This pattern of three-person rituals going off one after another started a while ago and continues throughout the day, only slowing down at night. It doesn’t stop at night, mind you. Rather, there are just fewer people in rotation and only a few rituals they’re testing benefit from being done at night.
Which seems a bit odd as more than a few rituals in pre-system stories needed to be under the moon, especially if said moon is full. Though from testing earlier in the month, what with the need for a full moon and all, unless specifically called out? Time of day has little to do with a ritual. Even a fire ritual won’t be boosted at noon.
Or rather, to take advantage of such things, you need better ritual equipment. Which had been tested as well. In particular, a ritual dealing with “yin”, the concept of cold/negative but not in a bad way, worked better at night when using aligned magical catalysts.
Which sadly, the local area is a little short on. Mostly because the local area was a little short on anything magical. The dungeon being the best source, except it provided the four elements, copper and tin ore.
This isn’t a bad thing or anything. Simply that the concepts around “water” used in the ore don’t match up enough to provide bonuses to rituals during the night. And the same is true for fire and the day. The current best theory is that the ore is simply too low-level at the moment and ore from deeper in the dungeon may become able to support such things.
And speaking of the dungeon, down in the core room, Doyle and Ally are still watching the changes happen. And the next day, early in the afternoon, a major event happened. The fifth-floor boss dropped a monster stone.
In theory, this should have happened sooner. After all, as long as people are coming from an earlier floor, there’s a quarter chance for one to drop. Except that’s the hard numbers and doesn’t take into account how much it takes to get a monster stone to drop in the first place.
For floor five, the particular bottleneck is that people make the fight too easy. At this point, there’s more than enough half-groups who can solo the fifth floor and offer their services to get groups past it. Generally not even taking direct pay, but rather just accepting all the drops from the run. Which seeing as for any six-person party means two runs, ends up as a decent profit for them.
Still, that doesn’t exactly do much towards spawning proper loot from the floors. The focus being more on floor four and the herbs.
Anyway, there had finally been enough honest groups of new delvers tromping through the floor for a monster stone to drop. Not that one or two hadn’t dropped before. They were just rare oddities since few groups went past floor six, let alone made it to floor ten. So having it drop from the floor five boss, represented a source of the stones which, at least for the moment, was going to trickle in a supply for people to actually mess with.
Doyle turns to Ally, ‘So what do monster stones actually do? Like, I know I’ve had them as loot for a while now, but because of how I set it up, the supply has always been non-existent.’
Ally shrugs, ‘They are just a source of power. That’s why they were in that power storage bundle you got.’
Doyle, ‘Well, what kind of power do they store?’
Ally, ‘Non-specific at best. Out in the wild, monster stones form naturally as a condensation of a monsters power. So for some random wolf monster out in a forest? Their core is going to be a random mix of wolf-flavored world energy and power from every other creature they’ve ever killed or eaten.
‘A dungeon monster stone? They’re more purely world energy with a focus on concepts and such from the monster itself. This becomes quite useful with certain monsters. For instance, a stone from a dungeon Phoenix will be quite valuable for healers in general and a true treasure for someone who heals with fire.‘
Doyle, ‘So the kobold boss’s stone isn’t worth much?’
Ally shrugs, ‘It is a drop from your first boss. There are concepts there that if they can figure out how to use them, will be quite powerful. Though maybe a bit specific. Maybe it can be used in an enchantment that makes a weapon better against dungeon monsters?’
Doyle, ‘Well, I guess all we can do is keep watching.’
Doyle pauses, ‘Wait a second. If it could help defeat dungeon monsters, could it make it easier to hurt me?’
Ally shakes her head, ‘Good thought, but dungeon monsters are meant to be killed and so the stone can help with that. If anything, the enchantment would have the reverse effect against a dungeon core.’
Doyle nods, ‘Okay, that’s fine.’
They both turn back to watching the slowly building reaction to the new drops.
Though only a few days later they get to see Ace counting the money that’s come in so far from the whole Blue Jean Cooperative nonsense.
Darren looks over all the copper coins, “Well, that’s more than I expected.”
Ace shrugs, “I don’t think they've noticed yet.”
Darren raises an eyebrow, “How could they not notice?”
Ace, “Well, firstly, not every settlement has their taxes turned off like we do. I know Bennett has a low tax set right now. So yeah, that group of goobers won’t likely notice, and communication is slow, so even if further away members did notice? They haven’t gotten the report back to the leaders, if they even know the reason behind the missing money.”
Ace swipes the coins into a couple regular bags. “They haven’t made a bit purchase from us yet, so this is all simply from their members buying small things. Which I’m going to guess is mostly from food. That group seems the type to order steak whenever possible and we are The source of beef right now.”
Darren raises an eyebrow, “You think that all is from them buying dinner?”
Ace shakes his head, “Not only that. There are certainly more than a few directly selling and buying out goods. We’re also the source of metal gear, either directly or the metal used to make it. But yeah, a good portion will be from food. As our merchant, you should have some idea of how much beef we’re shipping out every day.”
Darren, “Well, it is a lot, but that’s a lot of coins for what is basically shaving slivers off every coin they spend on it. I doubt that with most purchases the system even takes a coin, instead adding it up until there’s enough.”
Ace laughs, “You don’t have a good feel for how much the culture in this community values beef. We might be selling steaks for coppers, but on the far end of the community from us? Well, let’s just say that I wouldn’t be surprised if the steaks that survive till there are being sold for a silver. We eat it as an everyday food simply because there is too much in this town. Even over in Bennett town, a steak sells for a copper plate.”
Darren shrugs, “Well yeah, that’s just the rise in cost because of having to move the supply. I guess I’ll just have to take your word for it. Though, thinking about it, should I make sure my merchants are selling the steak from more out there?”
Ace shakes his head, “No, keep a fair price. The word had too many rich freaks before the magic arrived. We don’t have to follow in their footsteps. In fact, I’m not going to let us! Things were bad enough when the rich could practically control the world for decades. Now, in a world where they don’t technically ever have to die?
“I’m not so blind as to miss the fact that I’m not the most benevolent. But I’m not going to Literally kill the planet for a bit more money. And since I have power now? I’m not going to let others do that either.”