Amazon Apocalypse 5: Chapter 44

We got back into translating ancient texts and designing talismans. Reluna continued to show me around the new and improved workspaces she’d designed for me.

As I’d suspected, she’d put a lot of thought into how to design a workbench that was comfortable and quick to use. Reluna seemed to be very keen on getting the maximum result out of the minimum amount of work.

With her to guide me, I sank into a newer and more efficient flow faster than I expected. The layouts for drawers and tools that Reluna had chosen made sense, and having the right set on hand was merely a matter of moving to the right workbench.

“Three new talismans! If I were to write down their designs and add them to the library in Mucaria, this would be worthy of professors’ stripes,” Reluna said.

I grinned at her. “You've seen nothing yet. I think I mentioned something about streamlining your talisman production system? What if I told you that you could automate more than just the printing process?”

I chuckled, then set up one of the floors in the tower Reluna had made for herself as something of an assembly line. I had plenty of spare machines kicking around, and software came suspiciously easily to me these days.

That was likely due to my Machine Spirit Awakening ability. In a sense, hardware felt like it knew what I wanted it to do and tried its best to comply, regardless of the software it was running. Thinking about it, I hadn’t had a single printer jam or disconnection since I got the ability, which was astonishing considering how poorly printers normally worked. Perhaps my ability tuned up hardware as well.

“What manner of ancient magic is this?” Mimiko stared in fascination as paper slid along a conveyer belt from printer to cutter in one smooth, continuous motion without stopping or any human intervention. A confectionery topping machine I’d stolen from some pastry store sprinkled down monster core dust in a continuous stream before the talismans were folded and glued by machine hands and assembled into ready-made talismans.

They weren’t the finest talismans in the world, and the designs made a few compromises, but the important thing was that they were fully automated. Even the monster cores came out of the experience farm we had in the courtyard. The only thing Reluna had to worry about was loading in a constant supply of paper and liquid glue.

“With this gift from our lord, your power will increase tenfold...” Mimiko congratulated Reluna, though I couldn’t help but feel a bit of jealousy in her words.

“I should do something for you too, Mimiko. What do you think about being introduced to the System? I have plenty of experience pearls for you to use. And you wouldn’t have to wear your funky glasses to use the Obelisk.”

Mimiko’s face drew tight, like she was struggling to conceal a look of disgust.

“If my lord requires my soul be twisted into an abomination against nature, then I must obey.”

I frowned, taking it to mean as firm a rejection as Mimiko could possibly give.

“I take it cultivators don’t think highly of the System, then?”

“To let an unthinking and uncaring machine restructure the depths of our soul would be the height of heresy for my people,” Mimiko explained.

“I see. I’m sorry to offend by the offer, then.” I replied, then frowned as a thought came to me. “What about that time I helped you reach C-Grade? Or rather, the Nascent Soul realm, as you call it? I touched upon your core and soul then and changed it. Or when I improved your talent for cultivation in general by fixing your spiritual root things? That was also soul magic.”

Mimko’s face flushed. “W-well... that’s different! Traditionally, you would only ever allow your Dao companion to touch your soul. It’s something very intimate, after all.”

“Dao companion?”

“Y-you know... someone you trust absolutely. Usually of the opposite sex. Often, cultivators will have children with them.”

“Like a husband or wife?” I suggested.

“No! This is something much more important. Husbands and wives come and go in the span of a cultivator's lengthy life. But a Dao companion is absolutely loyal and a life-long bond. They are someone you can trust without fear of doubt or backstabbing, as is so common among even the closest friends among the sects. A Dao companion is someone truly special. They have to be if you are entrusting your very soul to them.” Mimiko insisted.

“So when I helped you in your cultivation, I was basically your Dao companion, wasn’t I?” I said with a chuckle.

I expected Mimiko to laugh it off, but instead, her flushed cheeks grew a deeper shade of red.

“I guess so,” she said, suddenly shy.

“Well then, since we’re dao companions and all that, I should do something nice for you. You’re going to be staying with me long term, so let’s get a room set up for you. I had one set aside for Cyra, but since she’s not here, maybe you can use it, and I’ll build a new one for her. And maybe we’ll work some helpful cultivation stuff into the design. I’ve certainly got enough of those formation diagram things.”

I shrugged and got to work. Originally, I’d intended to build another cabin like I had for Reluna. I figured if I was a guest somewhere, I’d prefer a private cabin to a room in a big castle, but maybe it was different for women. I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, and Mimiko would get a nice room full of all the stuff a cultivator could want.

I took a grip to Governess and arranged for the necessary changes. I chatted with Mimiko a bit about what all the cultivation formations I had in storage actually did.

“So basically these things increase ambient mana density? Is it a one-way membrane?”

“The simple ones are little more than a seal. You can crack open monster cores within them and expect the energy not to drain out of the room you're cultivating in. The more complex ones you have here will gather the ambient energies of heaven and earth, purify them, and concentrate them into a nexus of tremendous power,” Mimiko explained.

Putting that in more rational terms, I translated that to mean these formations were a one-way filter for mana. A reverse osmosis process would be the closest comparison, just working with mana rather than water.

“If that’s the case, then most of these formations of yours suck.”

“These are heaven-grade formations suitable for the highest-ranking elders of the Black Beast Sect,” Mimiko protested.

We'd raided them from Black Beast Sect private vaults, so these formations had probably been used by high-ranking elders before we stole them. I’d laid out all the ones I had in storage for her to choose from, and she had trouble picking because she liked so many of them.

But I wasn’t seeing whatever she was seeing. To my eyes, the enchantments were riddled with errors and inefficiencies. Not a single one of them took the time to route mana extra-dimensionally, meaning all of them had the flaw of needing to have a physical structure on the material plane. And not one of them manipulated time at all, leaving a massive amount of mana on the table from the past, future, or alternate possible states of the present.

After studying the remains of that axe I’d looted from the administrator golem, I was pretty sure I could design a series of fate-based enchantments that would draw on the idea of probability. In essence, I’d be able to use the Kindling dimension to route through mana that might have existed in the past or future, thereby granting the mana concentration formation access to extremely exotic and powerful mana types.

With that plan in mind, I got to work. All the other formations became scrap for this great work. Mimiko bit her lip, looking like she might cry over the destruction of so many of her precious heaven-grade formations.

“I truly hope you know what you’re doing, my lord. Any of these things would have been enough to start a war between B-Grade sects...” Mimiko said with a heavy voice. She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye as she spoke.

“Nonsense. Your heathen artifacts are a worthy sacrifice in the pursuit of magic! Go, Carter!” Reluna chucked the last of the precious formations into the furnace we were using to melt it the exotic metals down to their component materials, dusting her hands with eager delight. I would reshape the metal into better designs once they were melted.

Several hours passed in a creative frenzy as I worked. Despite evolving my job into that of a Kindling Architect, I’d had little call for my new abilities besides working on System infrastructure. My ability to work with extradimensional forces had been truly enhanced, but what was really impressive was that now Reluna and Mimiko were able to help me.

Neither grasped the big picture, but both could still help me despite that. In the past, only Gobgob had been of any real help when I was making something, but now even Reluna and Mimiko were able to contribute in small ways.

“Reluna, I want you to inscribe these metal disks with a series of symbols. Hand me a scrap of paper, and I’ll write them down for you.”

I took a piece of blank paper, then telekinetically heated certain parts until all the symbols I wanted Reluna to transcribe had been burned into the page, then I handed it off to her and addressed Mimiko.

“Mimiko, I want you to stack these metal rods up around the exterior of what will become your room. Don’t worry if it looks messy. I’ll hide the wiring in a higher spatial dimension.”

Mimiko ran off with a stack of metal rods. Normally, each would have a series of questions as the task progressed, slowing both me and them down, but thanks to my job, things proceeded smoothly, and they didn’t report back until their tasks were complete and they were ready for another assignment.

Thanks to their help, I completed something that should have taken me several days in just a few hours.

“Voila! Done!” I declared as we filled up Mimiko’s new room with what appeared to be junk. Wires, inscribed metal plates, monster cores, computer processors, and a thousand other odds and ends were heaped atop one another in seemingly nonsensical fashion.

“Very impressive, my lord...” Mimiko said, though her tone said it was anything but.

“Are you sure we put it together correctly, Carter? It looks like a pile of junk,” Reluna asked.

I chuckled. Mimiko’s ego-stroking was nice, but it was also good to have Reluna there to question me and avoid obvious errors. But in this case, I’d triple-checked everything and verified that it was working perfectly.

“Are you ladies doubting my capabilities? Maybe I’m just a madman who turned a bunch of magical junk into regular junk?” I teased.

Mimiko winced at me calling those precious heaven-grade formation arrays junk.

Reluna cupped her chin in her hands. “A madman... hmm... it would make sense in a lot of ways, now that I think about it.”

“Well, not today! Observe the final touch.”

I snapped my fingers and everything we’d stacked up vanished, like it was being pushed into an invisible bag of holding. That was pretty close to the truth, at any rate.

Suddenly Mimiko’s new room was empty, like all our hard work had never happened. There was a moment of silence from the three of us, broken only when we started to feel the mana flooding in.

“Truly impressive. I wish I could take credit, but alas, I had little clue what I was doing throughout most of it.” Reluna threw me an appreciative nod.

To Reluna and me, this much ambient mana was a strange feeling. We’d worked with magic long enough to know its feel, and we had plenty of spells to harness it for our spellcasting. Something like my old Power of Nature ability would have been extremely useful in an environment like this, and through the similar ability I’d rolled into my Apocalypse Dragon Signature Skill, I could feel the ambient mana waiting to be used.

But that was all it was for the two of us. A minor curiosity that would be situationally useful. But for Mimiko, this was a treasure far beyond the trinkets she’d been planning to use from my cultivator loot stash.

“This... this... heaven-grade? No, this is too powerful to be mere heaven-grade! Transcendent! Divine! This is like an artifact from the mythical higher realms. How did our hands make something like this?” Mimiko stared at her fingers as though she couldn’t believe she’d played a part in crafting the wondrous phenomenon around her.

“I take it this is suitable?” I asked with a smile.

“Beyond suitable. I fear an ascendant shall suddenly appear and murder me for this treasure...” Mimiko gushed, eyes still full of wonder as she looked around expecting a sudden ambush.

“Well, I’ve got good news. In System space, A-Grades have little use for this. Our mana pools refill in accordance with our mana regeneration rate. I take it that things are a bit tougher in cultivator space?”

Mimiko nodded numbly. “Indeed. While we generate some mana passively, to use any appreciative amount, we must gather it ourselves. Most cultivators spend much of their time meditating on heaven and earth and absorbing ambient mana. But with a cultivation chamber like this one, one hour of meditation is as good as a century spent outside it. With this, the greatest bottleneck in cultivation is entirely removed.”

I rubbed Mimiko’s head. “You shouldn’t actually need to meditate all that often. The way the enchantments work, if there’s a chance you would have meditated and cultivated, some effects of that theoretical meditation session will be carried over into the real world.”

I had some hopes that I could make something more powerful and eventually conjure items I might have built into existence without actually needing to build them, but my understanding of fate and the Kindling dimension wasn’t quite at that level yet. This was a great test, though.

“It is very impressive,” Reluna said.

“Glad you like your room. Now, where do you want your furniture? I figure you want a bed, desk, maybe a yoga mat? We could set up a spare TV too. Just point the way.”

“Huh?” Mimiko didn’t even seem to notice as she stared blankly at the walls around her with a look of reverence on her face. Reluna ended up making suggestions for decorations, and I started following them, hoping it would wake Mimiko out of her stupor. But she didn’t even blink, even when Reluna and I laid out a huge fuzzy pink carpet and a big stuffed unicorn.


<Note>
You know, I originally thought Carter would spend most of the books chasing forbidden knowledge and doing some crafting on the side, but now it feels like Carter's Kindling Architect job has left his class in the dust. At least in terms of bending reality to his will.