Age of Gods - A VRMMO Story

With the baton done, Thomas pulled out the list of requests and looked it over again. He was hoping to find something he could make with what was left of the day. Sadly, the projects remaining on the list would take at least the majority of a day to complete. So, he ignored them and decided to do his own thing. First up was cleaning the slag from the Sunshine Gold and pouring it into the ingot mold. The melted material left within the crucible wasn't quite enough to fill the entire mold and Thomas had no more ore to add to it. This left him with one and seven-tenths of an ingot of Sunshine Gold.

While the second ingot cooled, he cleaned out the crucible and tossed in the second ore he'd dug out that he suspected to be more Icebound Platinum from his metallurgy. He really hoped it was since he wanted even more of that metal to make gear for Snowlily. The more he had the better. If it turned out to be something else, well, he would just deal with it later.

He left the ore to melt in the crucible and tried to decide what to do with his time. He really wanted to make a new set of tongs and a hammer to make his creation of elemental metals less wasteful but that would require using high-grade materials. He'd managed to use high-grade materials without drawing much attention before but he was running low on Origin Steel. He also felt the Origin Steel wasn't quite right for what he wanted to make. He needed something with a good or great mana conduction property. Sadly, the only materials he had like that were not suitable for the task of forging. So, making new tools was out.

He sat on the top of an anvil and crossed his arms over his chest to think. He had to plan carefully for the future. He intended to head into the dungeon for two full days, all forty-eight hours, earning experience and preparing weapons for his jailbreak. His biggest concern was locating Snowlily though. He had no idea how extensive the caves were or where in the caves she was located. His highest priority was to find her and get to her as fast as possible. He simply had no idea how to do that.

His best bet was to locate ice magic. The problem was, unless she was casting a spell at the time he was searching it wouldn't do him any good. The second option was to try and enhance his 'All Seeing Eyes' using something, maybe goggles. He could see elements through the walls but not very deeply. If he could enhance that through an enchantment and focus his sight to look for spots of Ice energy then maybe, just maybe, he could locate her. That still left him with not knowing the layout of the cavern. He needed a way to easily and rapidly map the entire cavern system. How was he going to pull that off?

He let out a sigh and spent a few minutes trying to think of different things to try. He had a couple of ideas but he was going to need to test them out to know if they were even possible. Until then he could only waste a little more time. To do so, he checked the crucible and smiled at what he saw. So far the ore he'd tossed inside hadn't melted much. The hardest metal to melt so far had been the Icebound Platinum. The combination of platinum, which already had a fairly high melting point, added to the natural chill of the metal from the Icebound attribute made it hard to melt. The metal ore in the crucible was showing the same nature which increased the odds of it being more Icebound Platinum. This was a good thing for him.

As he sat back on the anvil he thought over his biggest concern, mapping the cave system. There were no mini-maps or world-maps that could be accessed in a system interface in AoG. He would have to find a way to circumvent that using magic. The problem was, he had no magic that had anything to do with mapping. Well, except maybe the Earth element. It was a cave and it was completely made of natural stone. He looked around and wondered if there was a way he could use that to his advantage. He glanced at the busy Clad and then the bored guards. Even after shocking one of them the guards were still lax and bored looking.

With everyone like that, Thomas closed his eyes and focused on the mana churning within his body. He agitated it and summoned up a little to convert to the Earth element. His goal was to try and create some sort of ground sonar that would let him see without using his eyes. He just wasn't really sure how to go about it. They say that necessity is the mother of all invention, time to see if that was true. He took a deep breath and focused his intent into the mana he summoned. He desired for the mana to penetrate the ground, walls, and ceiling around him to allow him to 'see' through them.

As he focused his mana gathered around him growing darker in color as the density increased. With his eyes closed, Thomas was oblivious to the changes in his mana. As he focused his intent his mana pulsed. It spread out in all directions sinking into the stone around him. He focused intensely until a small amount of information returned to him. It was a... feeling. An odd feeling. He released more mana increasing the power of the second pulse he released. The feeling became more distinct but he still couldn't identify what it was. He released even more mana in the third pulse and the feeling suddenly came into focus.

With his eyes still closed, he slowly turned to face the direction of the feeling. It felt like... hardness. Like touching a brick wall or something similar. It truly was difficult to describe just what the hell he felt. He just knew he felt something in the direction he faced. He lifted his hand and pointed it in the direction he felt the something and sent another pulse. This time the pulse of Earth mana was focused in just that direction. The odd feeling became more intense and he felt that it wasn't all that far away from him. Even with his eyes closed, he could still somehow feel that the hard thing was at least fifteen to twenty meters away.

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Thomas stopped what he was doing and opened his eyes. He found himself staring at the wall behind where he slept. His bed was about seven meters away so whatever he felt was a good eight to thirteen meters beyond that. It was also the only thing he'd felt. He couldn't detect the guards or even the much heavier anvils. It was rather disappointing. He quickly opened his character sheet to see if he'd unlocked a new skill or ability. What he saw made him both happy and annoyed.