THUD — PLOD
"Ouch..." I rubbed the top of my head, feeling the little bump that was starting to swell more.
"Haih, why isn't it working?" I made a tweak to the activation condition of the latest entry in my Lightning Brain mutation instruction list before picking up the small rock again. I threw the small rock straight up, adjusting the angle a little so that when it came back down, it would fall on the top of my head.
Through my Electrolocation, I saw a trail of blue lighting up as the rock displaced the lightning mana in its path. Halfway through its descent, I had already braced myself as I had a feeling that the spell would not activate. Despite that, I held out until the last second as the rock thudded off my head and fell to the ground.
THUD — PLOD
"Blasted goblin! Damn, still doesn't feel as natural as 'Fuck'" I tried imitating the curse I heard the other day in my attempt at trying to speak like a native Vesperian. I pulled on the Weave to access my status and subsequently the Lightning Brain mutation instruction list, looking at the latest entry.
Lightning Brain Instruction List:3 - Preconditioned Lightning Enhanced Movement - activates pre-defined muscle group combination to jump sideways when detecting object moving at 10 meters per second towards the user
I had already been at it for three hours this morning. I went through all kinds of factors and already started to eliminate them one by one. At first, I thought maybe the rock I used was too small. At some point I had placed a small boulder up a slope with a stick and rope set up. I triggered it to roll towards me and even that did not activate the conditions. I had to jump out of the way at the last minute in case it broke my leg.
I then began tweaking and loosening the conditions for activation, and went as far as tweaking the specific words I used or the intent. I adjusted the speed and everything that I could think of but it still did not work. Not even a peep of activation coming from the mutation. For a moment, I thought maybe my mutation stopped working. But then I recalled I had used my pre-programmed Lightning Infusion to dodge the small boulder earlier.
I decided to take a break before the bump on my head grew bigger, laying down on the grass and closing my eyes.
I was trying to enjoy the summer sun with my eyes closed when something blocked my view. I had turned off my Electrolocation to actually rest my brain. I briefly wondered if it was some giant beast that had wandered out of the Greywoods.
I opened my eyes and saw Thal bending over me, blocking the sun.
"Oh, it's just you." I said as I sat up, which prompted Thal to stand straight.
"What do you mean it's just me? What were you doing anyway? I thought you were busy practicing one of your new spells" Thal asked.
"Yea I was, but I was not making much progress so I thought I should take a break. What are you doing here?" I looked suspiciously as I saw her hiding something behind her back.
"Marta told me to bring you lunch, I thought we could eat together" Thal brought her hands out from behind her, revealing a wicker basket which probably contained the goods.
"Sure have a seat, not like I was getting anywhere. I could use the break" I said while offering the empty patch of grass beside me for her to sit.
"I'm sure you'll figure it out. You always do." Thal said as she placed the basket down between us and sat. She started taking the sandwiches out and passed one to me.
I waited for her to swallow her first bite before asking.
"Why do you think that I will?" I asked, not sure where the confidence was coming from.
"I mean you always do. First our food situation. Then our funding situation with the soap. You kept us warm in winter. Then there was the whole Royal Inspector situation. And even this thing, with the delicious white sauce in it" She held up the sandwich with a bite in it.
"It's called a sandwich, and the white sauce is called mayonnaise. Please do keep the recipe to yourself though. I'm sure Marta can sell jars of it to the taverns in town."
"Exactly my point! Anyway I'm not even sure why you're pushing yourself so hard. If you come up with a few more food ideas I'm sure the military would make you their cook instead"
"Ha ha, very funny. But thanks, for the vote of confidence"
We continued to eat in silence as we enjoyed the summer breeze, looking at the fishes swimming around in the river. I threw a pebble into the stream and watched it drift along with the flow of water. As it sank to the bottom, some of the smaller fishes darted out of the way, even the ones who had not seen it coming.
"Say Thal, how do you think the fishes know to avoid the rock without looking at it?" I wondered out loud.
Thal looked at me like I was stupid, which offended me a little if I was honest. "For someone so smart you sometimes ask the dumbest thing"
"Well if you're so smart why don't you tell me the answer" I challenged.
"Duh, obviously by sensing the movement in the water" Thal said
Sensing the movement of water.... That was when something clicked in me. I had been going about this whole thing wrong. I had been trying to tie the activation condition to the object when I should have tied it to the lightning mana it was displacing.
"Oh my god Thal, you're a genius!" I wolfed down the rest of my sandwich before getting up and starting to throw rocks into the air again.
Thal just shook her head as she finished the rest of her sandwich before heading back.
PLOD
The rock hit the ground as I dodged to the side, missing my head this time. Timely too, as the top of my head was starting to swell into an angry red despite my enhanced constitution. While I had the theory right, it still took another hour for me to fine tune the conditions to get it right.
I had to assign a unit to my lightning mana and calculate how much lightning mana the rock displaced. The problem was that different sized rocks moving at the same speed displaced different amounts of lightning mana. I also had to tie the measurement to a surface area so that I would not fail to move and get sniped by an arrow.
"Phew, fucking finally."
I took a short break, looking at the rock and thought about the activation conditions. Hmmm, did I really set it right?
I got up and decided to put my hunch to the test. I threw the rock straight up, but this time angling for it to land in front of me instead. When the rock entered my bubble of perception, halfway through the descent I jumped sideways as the falling rock still activated the condition despite it not falling towards me.
"I knew it! Haih, I celebrated too early" I said dejectedly. Turns out, tuning the spell to measure displacement worked at measuring speed but was still shit at determining direction. As long as any projectile entered my spell range at my pre-defined speed, it would activate Lightning Infusion to make me jump even if it would not hit me.
"At least I'm graduating from the rock." I went back to the tool shed to retrieve some rope, and also took the chance to drink some chilled water. I managed to find a stick that was heavy enough to swing, but not heavy enough to give me a concussion if it hit my head. I needed to vary the direction that an object was coming at me.
Three hours later, I had cuts and minor bruises on my arms and back from being hit by the huge stick. I guessed this was how Daredevil felt every time he got beaten up by his own Stick. Hehehe, I chuckled internally at my own pun. Those martial art movie montages always made it feel so quick and effortless. Three hours and I barely made any progress.
"Well like Thal said, I'll figure it out" I decided to call it a day considering I at least made progress with determining speed. Perhaps another few days before I would find a solution to this conundrum.
FWOOSH
I automatically ducked as the stick swung over my head. I had placed two boulders to my side to test a different variant of my evasive maneuvers. It had been three weeks since I figured out the displacement trick. Turns out, working out the direction was exponentially more difficult than just calculating speed.
About one week in, I had the idea to use vector calculus in determining the trajectory. However, assigning all the parameters and coordinates to enable the calculation using my Lightning Brain was a Herculean task. It took a few days to assign parameters to a small section of my bubble to test my theory. Once it was confirmed, I took the rest of the second week to map out the rest.
The third week was spent setting up the calculation formula to determine whether a moving object in my sphere of detection would hit me or not. It would be the death of me to map every single possible direction an attack could come from. I also had to factor in my environment, learning from the slip when I fought the Weepwrym, hence the two boulders I had placed on both my sides to test it. It would be stupid to dodge either left or right in a narrow corridor when an arrow was flying straight at you.
I finally looked at the name the Weave had provided my latest entry in my Lightning Brain instruction list.
Lightning Brain Instruction List:3 - Automated Lightning Steps (Basic) - A set of evasive maneuvers that are triggered based on direction of attack, determined by use of vector calculus. Command set would use Lightning Infusion to trigger movement in user's body based on direction of attack and surrounding conditions.
I made a mental note that Lightning Steps sounded like some Wuxia movement skill. It probably also had the word 'Basic' in it because the scenarios I had included were literally quite basic. I had not yet accounted for multiple projectiles, different angles of attack, sequencing of multiple attacks etc.
I would need to gradually add them to the command list and for now, I would only turn on Lightning Steps for attacks that came from the side or the back. I wanted to still manually respond to attacks I could see and learn what to do. That would allow me to incorporate more scenarios into Lightning Steps.
After weeks of training, I was finally ready to get back to real work — though part of it was also to make sure I was mentally stable after the run in with the bandits. The next step of my coil gun project would require me to get higher purity copper and I had a hunch that it would be more than just simple shopping with Garrick.
It was the second time I was at Garrick's place, perhaps after the last ordeal some of this old man's walls were starting to come down. "So, what do you need this time? Something less dangerous I hope." Garrick said without missing a beat the moment I sat down at the table. Marta probably did not tell him about the bandits, and I planned to keep it that way.
"I hope so too. It's actually something simple really. I just need to get my hands on higher purity copper. The last time I wanted to come with you to the camp was to see if there were any there. However it seems like even the black market doesn't have it"
"Ahh, that's a tricky one lad. You won't find it in the black market simply because it's not expensive enough for anyone to bother. It's also really heavy to transport in big quantities. The only people who would pay a premium for it are the nobles in the capital for their ornaments"
"So only way is to go to the capital? It's not so easy lad. Most of the higher grade copper is automatically kept by the local nobles. It's then sent to the artisans to commission art pieces. The nobles can't be bothered with a little bit of change, not that you have enough money, and the artisans won't risk angering the nobles."
"Err, so you have no solution for me?" I just gave the old man a dead pan look. That was a long, roundabout way to tell me no.
"Hold your horses lad, I'm not done. As I said, the local nobles usually hold on to all the high grade ores. They do sometimes post missions to the local Adventurer Guild. If there's a mission from them, you could potentially ask to be paid in high grade copper, especially if the mission is difficult enough."
I just gave Garrick another dead pan look. "You know the whole ordeal where I had to escape the evaluation. Wouldn't that be for nothing if I just went ahead to do this, I would just be exposing myself wouldn't I?" I countered.
Garrick gave me a blank look before realizing his mistake. "I sometimes forget how young you are. You seem to understand complex concepts quickly but seem to lack basic knowledge" Garrick said as he shook his head. I was going to say something else but he just held up his hand.
"Let me explain. The Adventurer's Guild in town does not answer to the crown of Vesperia. In fact, they don't answer to any kingdom or empire." My eyebrows lifted, the gears starting to spin in my head.
"Also, they don't really care about your identity. I've heard people don't need to show their faces" Garrick added, already preempting what I was going to ask.
"Then how do they know people aren't just criminals, or people who committed crimes won't register again under a different name" I asked.
"Ah but here's the beauty, they don't care about the laws of the kingdoms they operate in. But it's not like they actively encourage people to commit crime. They only care about their mission, which is to defend humanity from other threats. Though humanity here is loosely termed as there are dwarves and the occasional elf" Garrick explained.
Wait! Dwarves and elves are real?!?!? I was still reeling from that revelation before Garrick continued.
"They only care about whether an adventurer has committed a crime against a fellow adventurer. They use a mana signature device and tie it to your registered Adventurer Plaque. Though as with all crimes, it's only known if it is reported. So this method is not fool proof either"
"Wait sorry I missed that, I was thinking of something else. You mentioned something about mana signature" I put aside the thought of dwarves and elves and paid attention again.
"Yes, like I said, they record your mana signature when you register. You can hide your face if you want. They don't really care as there are spells and enchantments that can alter your appearances anyway. Mana signature, now that's a lot more difficult to tamper with."
"So in theory, I could register with my mask on under a different name" I clarified.
"You might get a few stares but you could. Though some kingdoms do put occasional bounties out on criminals and share their mana signature. If you had been tested like normal, the Royal Inspector would have had a record of your signature as well. Though judging by the fact that you're still here it means that they don't." Garrick further explained.
"Alright, thanks old man. I owe you one." I thanked Garrick and got up to leave.
"Heh, don't mention it. Oh right, remember to tell them you're from High Moors instead of Vesperia when they ask — they are usually a reclusive bunch so most people don't know much about them. The guild might not answer to the crown but they do know about the conscription law. Best to avoid any unwanted questions" he said as he showed me out. He was surprisingly chatty and in a good mood today. Maybe the extra gold I gave him from the Storm Runner hide helped. I just shook my head at that thought as I left.
I was standing on the cobbled street in front of one of the few buildings that was made mostly out of stone in town. It was a modest two-storey stone building, with a guild plaque over the door. The picture had faded with time and the words 'Adventurer's Guild' had been carved in probably by one of the clerks, judging by the shoddy work.
I was wearing the wooden mask Garrick had bought for me when we first visited the black market. The two giant doors were not quite completely closed; the hinges were probably out of alignment and no one had bothered