Abrasive gemstone dust hung in the air of the Gem-master General’s laboratory, forcing Orion to activate his air-filter artifact to breathe freely. Dozens of grinding wheels shrieked in unison, hurling showers of white-hot sparks against the soot-stained granite walls.
Daelin led Orion through the maze of workbenches, stopping before a station near a roaring furnace.
Thraing himself stood over a polishing lathe. The old dwarf, bald with a scarred skull revealing past shrapnel injuries, wore multi-lensed goggles that distorted his eyes grotesquely. His left hand was missing three fingers, replaced by mithril prosthetics that moved smoothly under his command.
Thraing Lazuli - Gem-master General of the Sunken Hold
Class: High Artificer [B-rank]
Level: 141
Mind: 912
Attunement: 905
Body: 319
Traits: Runic Sovereignty [B-rank]; Dedication to the Gem [A-rank]; Mana Manipulation [B-rank];
After two minutes of silence, Daelin cleared his throat.
Yet Thraing still did not look up. He pressed a raw ruby against the spinning whetstone, shaving off a microscopic fraction of a carat. Only when the facet caught the furnace light just right did he power down the lathe. He pushed his goggles up, his rheumy eyes locking onto Orion with unfiltered hostility.
"I smell human," he rasped, his lips curling into a sneer. “Yes, I can feel the arrogance from here; no confirmation needed. Why have you brought such a creature into my workshop, Prince?”
"He is a good friend of mine, Gem-master,” Daelin defended, crossing his muscular arms. “I can assure you he understands the craft better than many dwarves. We’re here because he needs a new resonance stone to serve as a focus.”
Thraing let out a barking laugh. He picked up an iron caliper and leveled it at Orion’s chest.
“I’m not surprised a human would want dwarven gems," he sneered. “I’ve had my fair share of encounters with your kind, mages and witches alike. You brute-force your spells, wasting half your mana and burning your foci like they were mere trinkets. Tell me, boy, if I gave you a deep-mantle diamond, how would you calculate its refractive index under arcane stress? How do you prevent internal mana bleed?”
“I’m not one to use brute force," Orion replied, his voice cold and flat. “To answer your question, it would require adapting the basic law n 1 sinθ 1 =n 2 sinθ. By calculating the exact ratio of the crystal's density to the ambient pressure of the Field, I would achieve total internal reflection. The mana would then bounce seamlessly along the lattice structure, losing no energy.”
Thraing froze, the caliper hovering in the air as he stared at Orion.
“Theory books are cheap, and memory isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” He changed the subject, lowering the tool and deliberately ignoring his correct response. "What do you intend to build?”
"A parallel processing core," Orion said. "I am currently running a thirty-seven-layer neural architecture inside a Blood Crystal. It translates my neural intent into structured runic bytecode, optimizes spellcasting inefficiencies in real time, and dynamically routes power. But the hardware is failing to keep up now that I have reached tier three. Even relatively basic spells fill its entire capacity, and it crashed while attempting to cast high-density ionizing radiation. Any more stress might cause it to fail catastrophically.”
Thraing’s eyes widened. Given the complexity of his own work, it was clear he understood the limits of magical conductivity and that Orion’s design was so complex it bordered on the impossible.
The old dwarf turned and unlocked a lead-lined lockbox bolted to his workbench. He pulled out a set of iron tongs, pinched a stone the size of a quail egg, and dropped it onto the anvil.
The crystal was almost translucent, shifting rapidly between pale violet and deep black depending on the light it caught. Merely standing near it made the hair on Orion’s arms stand on end. It felt like a thunderstorm, wild and violently unstable. When he tried to focus his senses on it, he had to forcibly restrict the data flow, lest he get lost in endless loops.
"A Wraithgem has the highest conductivity of any precious stone found in the mountains," Thraing said, his gravelly voice dropping to a whisper. "But it is a wild stallion, and rejects rigid enchantments. Most artificers blow their own hands off trying to bind it. I will not cut it for you, human. If you want it, you must shape the pathways yourself. And pay for it, of course.”
For all that his every instinct screamed at him to accept the deal on the spot, Orion forced himself to think. He was a man of reason and wouldn’t be locked into a bad deal just because he really wanted something.
“How much?”
Thraing smirked. “A thousand gold.”
Beside him, Daelin sputtered, but Orion immediately began running calculations. He didn’t have nearly enough to pay for it up front, having brought about a hundred gold coins from his mission pay and accumulated wealth.
That alone was a very respectable sum, enough to fund his research for decades or even to buy a townhouse in the center of Silverpeak, with furnishings and servants attached, and more leftover to run it for many years.
Essentially, the old dwarf was valuing the Wraithgem as one would an Elixir.
Rather than contest the price, knowing Thraing wouldn’t haggle, he let his hand dip into his belt and drew out a vial.
“This is an Elixir of Healing brewed by the Veil Priestess of Potioneering of the Lunar Sanctum.”
This time, it was Thraing who sputtered in surprise. Once he recovered, he seemed almost ready to dismiss the claim, but the sheer amount of mana in the vial made it clear it was no fake. Daelin interjected before the negotiations could spiral further.
“It’s the real deal,” he said, drawing Thraing’s attention. “Orion’s mother is the Veil Priestess in question, after all.”
A light went on in the dwarf’s eyes. “Ah, I see. Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to get your hands on something like that.”
“But are you sure?” Daelin asked, ignoring the glare the Gem-master shot him. “You might be able to get more, but I doubt even your mother can churn those out, especially given how busy she must be. And would she want you to barter her works like that?”
She wouldn’t be that happy, Orion knew. Mostly because it meant losing one of his best safety nets. But she’d understand.
“I want the Wraithstone and full use of this laboratory while I work and for as long as we reside in the Fortress,” he said instead, staring Thraing down, who took a moment to think it over.
Eventually, he gave a curt nod. “I meant what I said; you’ll have to do the work yourself. But I will grant you access.”
And with that, the deal was struck, and they handed over the goods.
Daelin was still fretting when Orion took over a workstation and began running deeper scans.
Again and again, he kept ending up in endless loops, but rather than discouraging him, it only made him giddier.
The sheer processing power this thing has, even without refinement, is frankly absurd. Mana just flows through it without impediment, as if it were in the Field itself. With the proper structure in place, I can only imagine how much I’ll be able to get from it.
In fact, he suspected the Wraithstone might last him beyond tier three and all the way up to tier four, with some adjustments when the time came for his next rank-up.
Not that it will happen soon, but it’s good to know I won’t have to go hunting for another gem. I doubt Mom will hand me any more Elixirs without making me promise never to trade them.
Once his scans were complete, he closed his eyes, tapping into the exhausted blood gem that housed his CC. He needed to transfer the operating system, but the Wraithgem’s chaotic nature meant the old three-dimensional structure would fracture immediately. He needed to build a more stable four-dimensional architecture, using spatial folding to route the mana through non-Euclidean geometry.
Simulations upon simulations ran in the background of his mind as he took bits and pieces of the old code, visualized it, added new lines, and wrote the new logic gates directly into the Field.
class TesseractCore:
def __init__(self, mana_input):
self.manifold = initialize_4D_topology(layers=37)
self.safetynet = dimensional_lock()
def process_intent(self, intent):
quantized = self.tokenize(intent)
for dimension in range(4):
quantized = apply_mobius_convolution(quantized, dim=dimension)
return execute_runic_bytecode(quantized)
Once the base-level structure was complete and his simulations began returning statistically identical results, Orion drew a laser-thin thread of pure mana, channeling it through his old core. The CC grew warm as Orion pushed it beyond one hundred percent capacity, using it as a compiler to carve the Wraithgem.
Slowly, he etched the microscopic traces directly into the shifting lattice of the new focus. The thirty-seven macro-layers of his original design evolved. Layer One, the Token Preprocessor, folded seamlessly into Layer Ten's operational conduits, forming a continuous feedback loop. The CC began to heat dangerously, but he kept going.
The Reflexive Optimizer—Layer Nineteen—was rewritten to model temporal mana decay. The Inference Stack, spanning layers twenty through thirty-four, twisted into a hypercubic tesseract, routing data through spatial folds to prevent energy dissipation. SpellParse and the ManaScheduler merged into a single cloud orchestrator.
By then, the blood gem was smoking, and thin cracks were spreading through its structure. He didn’t have long.
Finally, he etched Layer Thirty-seven, the SafetyNet. A dimensional kill-switch, inscribed as a tesseract within a sphere, guaranteeing an instantaneous shutdown should the core ever achieve true autonomy.
The old CC cracked, and a foul smell of burnt blood filled the workshop.
Orion executed the final line of code.
The gem shattered into glittering dust. At the same moment, the Wraithgem flared with violet light, and its chaotic shifting ceased, settling into a crystalline structure that far surpassed its former version, unfolding across more dimensions than it should have been able to.
Orion almost didn’t notice as Daelin handed him a simple, empty pendant, slotted the Wraithgem into the bracket, and slipped it on.
The world snapped into impossible clarity. His cognitive processing speed spiked by fifty percent. The interface of his overlay expanded, running diagnostic simulations on the ambient heat of the furnace, the structural integrity of the cavern, and the mana density of Thraing’s aura at once. His mind remained cool, isolated from the staggering influx of data by four-dimensional routing.
When pushed, he could even recall the exact sequence of strikes from the High Priestess's battle against Uther, decrypting far more of the corrupted data than he’d been able to before.
System Notification!
You have adapted and crafted a new version of the Computing Crystal!
You have worked with a Wraithgem!
You have crafted non-Euclidean space within a Wraithgem!
You have produced a [Unique] artifact!
You have produced a [Named] artifact, [Orion’s Computing Wraithgem]!
+7,910,100 Exp
Level up!
Level up!
The sheer flow of experience staggered him for a few moments, but he managed to set it aside and focus on the present.
Thraing stared at the glowing crystal resting against his chest, and while Orion sincerely doubted the dwarf possessed the vocabulary to describe what he had just witnessed, his artificer’s soul recognized a masterwork.
"You actually did it, you crazy bastard,” Thraing whispered, subconsciously reaching out to brush a speck of blood-dust from the anvil. “Yes, I can see you were meant to have it, human. And may the stone have mercy on whoever you point that mind at.”
"Thank you, Gem-master General,” Orion said, offering a curt nod.
Daelin grinned, slapping Orion on the back as they turned and made their way through the maze of grinding wheels toward the exit.
The journey back to the eastern barracks was a bit of a blur as Orion was busy assessing the true capabilities of his new CC and the implications of the System Notification.
A surprising sight greeted them when they opened the door.