Amazon Apocalypse 2: Chapter 62

If these two precious items had been my family’s heirlooms, I probably would have been shaking in my boots and too nervous to expend them. After all, if this didn't work, I would likely lose them both. But I'd gained both of these things through luck and happenstance. Why not roll the dice in the hope that I could turn the Artificing book of Mastery into something useful?

I placed the strange gem atop the book and waited. After a moment, a prompt appeared.

Would you like to use the Lesser Gift of Resource enhancement on the book Artificing: Book of Mastery? Both items will be consumed in the process and your results will be influenced by an element of availability. This action is irreversible.

After a moment's hesitation, I dismissed the warning and accepted the prompt. The gemstone atop the book immediately cracked and shattered into a million pieces. From those pieces I caught a glimpse of something no mortal should see.

Wincing, I clutched at my temples as a bolt of pain shot through my head. I kept my eyes open all the same, though.

Your mind has struggled to comprehend the incomprehensible.

Through your efforts, your knowledge of the unknowable has increased.

Your Scholar of Forbidden Knowledge Class has increased by one level!

Some realization crossed my mind, only to vanish a moment later as the thought slipped away like sand between my fingers. Whatever I'd just come to understand had been too big for my mind to hold onto at my current realm of power. Myrina hadn't been kidding when she’d said the scholar class was often considered a worthy consolation prize.

I was glad to earn a class level. More alarming, though, was the fact that the book and gem had both disappeared.

I scrolled back with my mind’s eye, trying to remember just what happened a few moments ago. I ignored the burning pressure between my brows that only grew the more I focused on remembering exactly what I'd seen.

Something like a tiny black hole had opened up, unfolding from inside the gem. It swallowed the book beneath it in one big gulp before vanishing along with the object it had swallowed. The gemstone had been an extension of something from the System's dimension, packaged and bundled so that it wouldn't harm the minds of every mortal who looked upon it.

"Did it fail?" I muttered, still staring at the empty space before me.

Not long after I had that thought, the empty patch of void opened up once more. This time, seeing it hurt my brain even more than before, but at least I was ready for it. There was something that resonated very well with my class in this strange void.

If I could just figure out how this void worked, I knew I could create a new and improved version of the spell for myself.

Your mind has touched upon the incomprehensible and grasped a sliver of enlightenment.

This enlightenment can be expended to upgrade or create a new spell for your class.

Your Scholar of Forbidden Knowledge Class has increased by one level!

Then, a new book appeared before me as though it had always lain there. Compared to the sinister aura of the void it had come from, this book was beautiful to behold.

The system's messages from before implied that this book had been obtained on my behalf from somewhere far distant. Wherever this book had come from was generations ahead of even the most advanced enchanters of Shadefall. There was magic in everything from the bindings to the pages of this book.

The cover appeared to be leather from a distance, but it was too flawless and perfect to be natural. It was some sort of synthetic material, not dissimilar to what we’d produced on Earth before the integration. Whatever means had been used to create this material had been magical, though, instead of technological.

The page within the synthetic material that formed its covers was special. The book was as thin as a tablet, and it had only the one page. Somehow, that single page scrolled through far more text than would fit on any traditional medium. It was generations more advanced than the crude video capture tablets that the maids back in the Samhain Clan had treated as precious, or even the collection of gaming devices Cyra had collected to lure a man into her clutches back at the castle.

You have obtained a Book of the Master Artificer!

This variant of Artificers gain access to unique abilities that enhance the speed and ease of artificing, this includes expanded cognition when thinking about subjects related to magic and artificing, as well as access to unique opportunities. This book may only be utilized by those who are already at least level 25 of the Artificers class.

The new book was simultaneously less and more than what I'd hoped for. I had wondered if I would receive an upgraded job that encompassed a greater domain, like how Artificer encompassed the domains of both Runesmiths and Enchanters. Master Artificer, on the other hand, seemed to be a general upgrade that would enhance all my Artificing-related abilities.

Do you wish to use the Book of the Master Artificer?

That made the decision to use the book rather straightforward. Of course I would use it on myself. There seemed to be no downsides to the upgrade, and plenty of upside.

I activated the tablet. The language was different from what the Amazonians used, which might have been a problem for anyone else, but my title kicked in once again. After a bit of time to focus, the meaning of the strange characters settled into my mind.

Minutes ticked by, but my mind remained absolutely focused on the page before me. I sensed Myrina and the others come to check on me after getting healed up, but they left after waving their hands in front of my face a few times and receiving no response. Myrina seemed particularly interested in the strange tablet book I was staring at. Fortunately, she didn’t try to take it from me.

It was dark when I finally finished the information contained in that seemingly never ending page. My eyes ached from staring at it for so long. I closed them after the tablet went dark, all life gone from it. The afterimage of the final words I’d read swam before me until I blinked.

At some point during my reading, I'd learned that all such objects were single use. The how and why came to mind when I had the thought; all the knowledge the tablet had contained was now mine. It would be some time before I fully integrated it and could recall everything with a thought, but I knew it was all there.

I checked my status screen to ensure it had worked, calling up only the information I wanted to see.

Name: Carter Smith

Job: Master Artificer (Mythic)

I grinned. "Well how about that..."

I was suddenly eager to craft something. I started rummaging around in my bag of holding for some supplies. I had plenty of enchanting tools and equipment after clearing out three buildings' worth of in-progress enchantments. Surely there had to be something...

Yes. There it was. A few monster cores should work for this. I didn't have any weapons to enchant or copper wire to make Mana Bombs, but I decided to try for something new. My mind was already thinking of what to build when I realized my hands were still flipping through the books I planned to read. The monster cores and tools I was pulling out of my bag of holding seemed to pop free of their own accord.

They froze when I turned to look at them. When I held out my hand, one of the monster cores drifted toward me. This was me controlling all these floating materials, as if I had a hundred hands. I quickly reviewed the list of abilities my new class promised.

Grants access to unique abilities that enhance the speed and ease of artificing.

Apparently, that meant I now had the power of telekinesis—at least when it came to holding tools and crafting materials.

"Yeah, I could see how this might enhance the speed and ease of artificing."

I chuckled. When I'd read that extremely vague description, I'd assumed I'd get some minor productivity bonuses. In a way, that's what this was, only it manifested in a way that was a hell of a lot cooler than being able to tinker slightly faster than before.

I spent the next hour jumping between reading the book of blueprints I'd gotten and doing some actual crafting. I found several items I had all the materials for and I crafted several items in quick succession. My first few attempts weren't all that great, but there was something satisfying about having them floating before me as their constituent pieces assembled themselves with rapid speed. These telekinetic powers were a lot faster than my fingers.

I wasn't sure how I'd ever lived without them.

They also seemed quite handy to have. Soon, I had quite a collection of magic wands—though I’d never really thought of myself as a wand guy. On the Gandalf to Harry Potter spectrum, I liked to think I was much closer to a Gandalf. Alas, I hadn't found many staffs for sale.

That was when I had my brilliant idea. If there were no staffs available for me to purchase or loot, I needed to make one. There was an orb in one of my new blueprints that should work nicely for the head of my new staff. And the length of the staff itself meant it was essentially a giant wand. The extra room along the length of it would allow me to inscribe multiple enchantments along it. I would be sacrificing size for power, but that didn't bother me in the least—especially if I could hold the staff using my telekinesis without the need to keep it in my hand during battle.

I refined the design for my staff several times before finally coming up with something suitable. It would be a length of ebony as tall as I was. The branch was slightly crooked at the end, as the piece of wood I'd stolen hadn't been of the highest quality, but I worked the crooked bend into the design. When complete, the gnarled crook would give the staff some character. I left the branches on it, too, which made the staff look a bit like a small, withered tree in winter.

I had plenty of monster cores, and I knew I could access the mana inside them. For a while, I debated summoning spectral monsters in the same fashion as the Shadefall Clan had done, but the more I studied the blueprints for those, the more worried I became.

The Shadefall Clan barely had a leash on their summoned monsters. I wondered how often the users had been eaten by their own creations. More often than I was comfortable with, of that much I was sure.

Unless I was missing something, these monster summoning artifacts were very much a double-edged sword. There may have been a reason the Shadefall militia were a much lower level, compared to the Samhain Clan's warriors. Sooner or later, a bad monster core killed its wielder.

Not to mention that, unlike my bond with Sharky, these things were more like another party member than a summoned monster. This meant that the wielder would, at most, only get a share of the experience points the spectral monsters generated, rather than the whole lot.

All in all, I decided to avoid pursuing the Shadefall Clan's beast core inventions. Now that I was able to examine the half-finished product, I saw them for what they were. These were a desperate, half-assed invention meant to exploit a critical weakness in one’s foe—regardless of the risk. Up until I’d started selling Mana Bombs and Mana Swords, the risk had paid off. Not anymore, though.

Instead, I decided to explore a different route—I used the monster cores to store mana. The mana stored in them retained the aspect of the original monster—but instead of being harmful, that was actually useful to me. Power of Nature allowed me to augment my neutral mana usage with other aspects. More than once I'd enhanced my Mana Bolts with fire mana, turning them into fire balls.

Instead of opting for just one big orb at the head of the staff, I attached hundreds of monster cores to my staff’s many branch. Round as they were, from a distance they looked like hundreds of eyes. Peering closely, I was pretty sure I could just make out the shadows of the creatures these cores had once been part of. The faint, constant shimmer of movement around the staff seemed almost but not quite detectable. This gave the whole piece an eerie look with so many orbs suspended like leaves from a tree.

Along the length of the wood, I engraved a web of enchantments meant for drawing mana out of the monster cores and channeling that mana into me. It was an elaborate process that would have been impossible for a wand at my skill level, but with a whole staff to work with I somehow managed it.

When I was finally done, I held my new staff aloft.

Your job, Master Artificer, has gained a level!

Ebony black and festooned with glowing eye-like monster cores, it would strike fear into the hearts of my enemies. "I shall name you... the Doom Seeker Staff!"

I looked around the tent, half expecting Sakura to pop out of nowhere and tell me it was a lame name. She must have been busy, though, because she didn't pop up and tell me how silly the name of my new staff sounded.

I shrugged. "Doom Seeker it is."

I thought it was a fitting name, given the hundreds of eyeball looking things and the shape of the crooked piece of wood that twisted just over my head. I wasn't sure how much use I'd get out of the staff, but it was a worthy test of my new abilities. And, at the very least, it had been worth a level in Master Artificer.

"There you are!" Myrina said as she opened the flap of the tent. "I was worried mother and the Elders had knocked the sense right out of you or something. Come on! We're all patched up and it's time for some training. Don't think your tutorial is over just because we're fighting a war!"