Explorer of Edregon

The rest of the afternoon was spent working with the Herbalists and Shia to create the perfect flower capable of thriving within the horrific conditions of the inside of a volcano. Vin had been surprised to learn that creating a magical plant was far more complicated than simply imbuing a spell into a seed and calling it a day. More often than not, the plant wouldn’t pass down the magic in its seed to the next generation. He and Shia ended up having to work together to continue imbuing the spell from one generation to the next as she used Rapid Growth to speed things up.

“With each generation, the plant will become more and more accustomed to the magic,” she explained after they’d imbued the spell into the seventh generation of flower. “Eventually, we’ll get to the point where the magic carries over all on its own, and then we can claim to have created a magical flower.”

“How much longer is that going to take?” Vin asked, watching Mary carefully plant this latest seed before scribbling down some notes in a dirt-encrusted journal.

“With my ability to influence plants, a lot less time than it would otherwise,” Shia laughed. “I’m not just whispering to the flowers for fun, I’m coaching them to make their seeds capable of storing magic. Once that’s done, I’ll direct them to grow a copy of the runic formation within them. Ideally, we should start getting results in another few dozen generations.”

“Good thing I didn’t have plans for the rest of the day,” Vin said, getting comfortable as the process started up again.

While doing the same action again and again was admittedly somewhat boring, it was phenomenal practice for his future attempts at creating an artifact. Shia explained how she gently injected some of her mana into the seeds, teaching him how to prepare objects for runic formations and becoming artifacts. It was a tricky process, and one she explained might take him some time to figure out.

Luckily, Beyond the Veil helped him see exactly how she was using mana to almost stretch open some extra space that, paradoxically, wasn’t any sort of alternative dimension. He had no idea what he was looking at, but the passive helped him figure out what she was doing, nonetheless.

Minor arcane discovery! 1,000 exp gained.

“The only reason why the seed works so well for holding onto the spell is because of my coaching,” she explained while they waited for Mary to plant the nineteenth generation of flower. “Most artifacts require a more stable structure. Gemstones are one of the most common materials in artifact creation, as their rigid structure works shockingly well for maintaining a runic formation.”

“But you don’t need to have a gemstone to make an artifact, right?” Vin asked, pointing toward his boots. “I don’t exactly have diamonds studded in my shoes after all.”

“Gemstones are just one example,” she nodded. “The material either needs to be rigid and stable, or alternatively, highly magical. If I had to guess, I’d imagine whatever leather was used to make those boots probably came from either a monster, or more likely, some sort of magical beast. Materials from magical beasts tend to have higher concentrations of mana.”

“Seriously?!” Vin gasped, staring at his shoes in a new light. “I hope it wasn’t a sentient one like Erik!”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure there are plenty of magical beasts that aren’t sentient,” Shia laughed, before laying a hand gently upon her wooden choker she’d never once taken off after receiving. “This artifact Erik gave me is another example. The wood was taken from the Tree of Ancients itself, meaning it’s heavily magical. No gemstones to speak of, but it can hold onto the spell that allows me to speak other languages without issue.”

“So if I want to make an artifact, I’m going to need some magical materials, or some gemstones,” Vin stated, pulling out the three silver guard badges Abby had given him. “These probably won’t work then, right?”

“Probably not. Not unless you had some method of making the metal magical. One trick you can do is embed a tiny gem somewhere within the metal, or on the back of the badge where people can’t see it. Though I suppose you’ll have to get your hands on some gemstones first.”

“I’d be willing to bet Scule had a mountain of them tucked away within his cape already,” Vin snorted. “The citadel is probably filled with them.”

“I suppose that’s one benefit to being close friends with a twice-prestiged Rogue,” she grinned.

The two of them continued working with the plants as the sun slowly travelled across the sky, all the while nibbling on a light lunch Casper ran off to grab for them. Finally, as it was beginning to set, they had a breakthrough.

“I think we did it!” Shia said, holding up a seed and staring intensely at it. “Not only is this one primed for magic, it still has Protection from Fire inside it!”

“Lucky generation number forty-seven,” Vin said, getting up and stretching a bit. Even after summoning a fluffy cloud to sit on all afternoon, he felt like he needed to get up and move. “So we pulled it off?”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Probably. We’ll need to grow a few more generations just to confirm the magic is consistently passed on from one to the next, but that shouldn’t take too long. Let’s grow another half-dozen to be safe before we risk propagating these seeds and handing them over to the dwarves.”

“I’ll go grab everyone dinner,” Casper sighed, running off again as Vin plopped himself back onto his cloud.

Thankfully, just as Shia promised, the quality testing went by far faster than the actual creation of the magic plant did, as they didn’t need to keep pausing to place the spell into the new seeds. By the time Casper returned with a platter of what looked like shredded pork sandwiches, they’d finally finished.

“Okay!” Shia said around a mouthful of meat as she held up a pouch of seeds. “I can officially say we’ve succeeded in creating a new strain of magical flower that is resistant to heat! I’ve kept some of the seeds for Mary and myself, but these seeds should grow in the Crater without issue. Good job everyone!”

Mary and Casper both let out tired but excited cheers, and Vin joined in with them. While he hadn’t planned on spending the entire day growing flowers, it had been highly educational and fantastic training.

Not to mention those flower seeds were more than worth their weight in metal armor.

“Thanks for all your help guys, I quite obviously couldn’t have done it without you,” Vin said, carefully taking away the pouch of seeds. “The dwarves have already been waiting for the better part of a week, so I’m going to go hand them off right now!”

“Try not to fall into the lava while you’re there,” Shia smirked, waving him off as she tore into another one of the sandwiches.

Not wasting any time, Vin jogged his way over to the forest dungeon, waving at the new guard of Slayers from the fourth wave practicing against some of the monsters before he entered the Underside. He wasn’t sure where Lumel was off studying, but he didn’t run into her on his way over to the Crater.

Relying on his Protection from Fire and his own speed, Vin darted around the slow-moving lava monsters guarding the Crater dungeon, quickly making it back to the checkpoint Nohral had set up. Clearing his throat, Vin knocked this time rather than simply barging out into a bunch of angry dwarves with crossbows.

“I’m here to see Nohral again!” he called out.

The door was quickly opened, and the one dwarf who had recognized him the last time gave him a gruff smile.

“Nohral said you’d be back,” he said, motioning for him to follow. “Come with me.”

Once again, Vin found himself being led across town toward the town hall, and he eyed up the scraggly, withered bushes they had growing out front. If all their hard work paid off as they’d hoped, the dwarves would have a bit more color down here before long.

“Welcome back,” Nohral said, standing as Vin was led into the same conference room as before. “After not hearing from you in some time, I was beginning to think you’d had second thoughts about our deal.”

“Sorry, things have been busy, and creating the flowers was a lot harder than I thought it would be,” he admitted, pulling out his pouch filled with seeds. “Though I think you’ll find our efforts were more than worth it!”

Nohral reached out and accepted the seed pouch, plucking one of the seemingly mundane seeds out of it and peering at it. “This is a magical plant, you say? One capable of surviving down here?”

“Yes, we put a lot of time and magic into creating it. Now that it’s made, the magic will flow from one generation to the next, meaning so long as you take care of them, the flowers should last basically forever. We also made sure to pick a more robust flower to begin with, one capable of growing down here without much dirt.”

“That does sound exciting,” Nohral said, smiling as he dropped the seed back in the pouch. “Our Smiths have been hammering away at your people’s armor for the past few days, but it will take us some time to create enough to outfit as many warriors as you requested. Why don’t you return in two weeks’ time? If the flowers have grown by then, we will happily hand over the armor.”

“That works for me,” Vin nodded. “Fair warning, I’m not entirely certain how long it should take the flowers to grow naturally, but I can bring my Druid friend along to speed things up just in case they haven’t bloomed by then.”

“We are in agreement,” Nohral said, giving him a warm smile. “Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”

“Actually… there is one thing,” Vin admitted, pulling out a sheet of paper Myers had given him when she’d heard he was heading toward the Crater. He had no idea how she’d heard what he was up to, but at this point, he just assumed Myers had her ways of knowing everything that went on around town. “Is there any chance your smiths could make some of these parts for us? I’ll be completely honest in that I don’t know what she’s planning, but one of our leaders wants to use them to build something.”

Taking the paper, Nohral opened it, blinking at the images drawn to scale. “Gears? Is one of your people a Tinkerer?”

“Not exactly. She is a crafter, though she specializes in monsters.” At this point, Myers had already prestiged, but Vin realized he didn’t actually know what prestige class she’d taken for herself. “She’s pretty crafty though. If she’s looking for all these gears, she probably has something interesting in mind.”

“It won’t be much of a hassle to make a few bags of gears,” Nohral shrugged. “We have more than enough Smiths to make it happen. For a moment there, I was worried you were going to ask me to make your people weapons.”

“No, I understand your reservations around weapons. As useful as they would be, you don’t need to worry about that,” he promised. It was a shame, though, as the citizens of Terra could in fact use some upgrades. The weapons the System provided when they first arrived on Edregon were fairly basic, and Vin could only imagine what their warriors would give to have their own darthsteel blades.

“It is because of that understanding I am willing to trade with you at all, so thank you,” Nohral reminded him. “Now, unless there is anything else you need, I have other matters to attend to.”

“That’s all!” Vin said, matching Nohral as he stood up. “I’ll be back in two weeks to see about the armor!”

“Perhaps bring a handful of carts with you,” Nohral chuckled, getting the door for him. “Otherwise, I’m not sure how you’re going to go about moving a few tons of metal armor all on your own.”