Universe's End

4. Musings

"Alright, test number one, in three… two….one…. and, go."

Speaking to no one but himself and little Jinn, Rory pulled a lever as a pulse of pneuma and vital essence coursed through the channels in the ground, a large circle of runes and symbols flooding with power.

C'mon…. C'mon!

Rory himself was currently wearing a protective mask alongside other protective gear, unsure of what the test results might be.

C'mon!

Within the circle was a strange amalgam —a flesh golem composed of monster body parts and metal stitched together.

C'mon!

As the energies properly suffused the ritual circle, Rory held his breath.

Andddd…. Oh, fuck.

Everything had been looking good, but suddenly a spark of blue energy crackled out from one of the lines in the ritual circle, like a discharge of electricity —the single warning of imminent catastrophic failure.

With barely any warning, Rory projected a dome around himself and Jinn as the circle exploded like a landmine set off. Seconds passed until the debris settled, leaving Rory in a room that now had a rather large crater in the middle of it.

"Dang," Rory whistled. "Talk about some kick."

The backlash of the sudden failure wasn't too surprising given how much energy Rory had been working with, days of concentrated essence and pneuma exploding instantly.

It sucks, but that's also why I dug out so many extra rooms for doing experiments in.

He had long ago learned his lesson of attempting cutting-edge experiments in the more 'settled' rooms, losing valuable equipment in the process.

The experiment itself was Rory's best approximation of Dr. Frankenstein. Ages ago, he had already accomplished making Imp Constructs, semi-autonomous defensive units that had protected the walls of Ehkorrus. Now he was trying to level up that same field, be it literally or metaphorically, through the creation of golems.

The idea was simple enough: Inscribe runes upon a monster core, which would be the central 'brain' of the golem, add extra runes where necessary as peripheral instructions, and tadah, golem.

Alright, perhaps a bit of a simplified explanation.

What mattered was that his first test run had failed rather spectacularly, eliciting a sigh from Rory.

"Goes to show everyone who thinks I somehow magically pull everything off out of my ass on the first try," Rory muttered, the demonic laughing face of Zoey jumping to mind.

They had been living together for quite some time now, more time together than not at this point, but even then, they still clashed personalities often enough. While Zoey tended to defer to Rory on matters of decision-making, it was hellishly wrong to assume that she had placed herself below him in any fashion. In a sense, she reminded Rory of a cat. She'd show up when she pleased, demand attention and goodies, and then piss off. Occasionally, they'd spend time together, usually tackling a rather challenging delve she'd discovered. Otherwise, they kept to their own devices.

For Rory, that typically meant the endless expansion of his volcanic workshop and the continued development of ever more weapons, armors, and whatever else interested him in the moment. It was honestly starting to become a problem; his inventory, which had once seemed bottomless, was now akin to an overfilled storage shed.

Now, it wasn't without its benefits. The expansive catalogue of tools and tricks up his sleeve was what had allowed them to overcome B3 of the Deep Chambers, which had been crawling with level seventy-three monsters, peaking with a level seventy-five floor guardian. The reward for clearing that floor was a small shrub that looked not all that dissimilar from a blueberry bush.

It, alongside the tree from the B2 of the Deep Chambers, had been transplanted and now grew within a room specifically designed for plant husbandry and study.

The tree, once guarded by Zoey's most hated monster genotype –the wyrm— wasn't useful as a building resource. Instead, it was very useful from an alchemy standpoint; every few months, a plethora of black roses with a single red berry at their center would bloom.

What was interesting about them was that they, for reasons Rory didn't understand, seemed to expand the durability attribute.

And not temporarily. No, when properly refined and processed into a brew, it resulted in what was likely the most significant brew ever made to date.