Ar'Kendrithyst

“Did you sleep well?” Erick asked Teressa, over a late breakfast.

“Best I’ve slept in a long time,” Teressa said, cutting into her large omelet.

Erick had watched her some while she slept, and yes, she had slept well, as far as he had seen. It was still important to ask these questions and get confirmation, though. It had been 20 hours since her accident, and her soul seemed completely fine—

With a small grin, Teressa said, “If the worst should happen and you gotta [Reincarnation] me, I’d like to be myself again.”

Erick shuddered a little, unable to find any words to say. He was scared of that possibility. He hoped that wouldn’t need to happen.

Kiri spoke, “Me too—” She rapidly corrected, “I’d like to be myself, is what I mean. I don’t want to be Teressa.” Her emerald scale face flushed a bit darker.

Ah?

Erick almost stared at her, for Kiri had taken Teressa’s admittance of worry for something much more lighthearted than it had been.

“I would also like to be myself,” Poi nodded seriously, as he said, “But a bit taller.”

Now Poi? Poi was just fucking with Erick in order to make him worry less.

Poi smiled at that thought.

Teressa kept grinning as the conversation turned to hypotheticals. “Maybe shorter would be better, for me. Bigger boobs. Maybe less muscular.”

Kiri laughed. “I suppose an orcol wouldn’t get back problems with age! Might as well go with as big of boobs as you can!”

“Now you’re just being silly,” Erick said, trying not to sound like he was complaining.

Poi nodded, then spoke in a serious tone that was not serious at all, “I will have a list of my own adjustments I would like if the worst should happen, Sir.”

Kiri and Teressa both laughed, and Erick did too, if only a chuckle.

Worry seemed to vanish like so much morning mist.

Still, though, Erick decided he would spend the day at home and put off all his meetings that he could put off. For necessary meetings, Erick could go to them in person. Work didn’t stop just because people got hurt. Teressa might not be worried about anything anymore (which might make her a liability as a bodyguard, but Erick would save that discussion for later) but Erick was still worried about his own little part of the world falling apart if he didn’t do his best.

- - - -

He could still do some magic, though, since Teressa was staying home. While Kiri went off to work with Mox, and Poi remained with Teressa, Erick moved over to his warehouse to get started on some spellwork which would become necessary for the future, if not tonight. First came an attempt at his [10 Restful Hours in 10 Minutes] spell.

But there were a lot of moving parts to this sort of magic. Erick mentally listed out the problems he would have to solve for, and then how he would solve them.

[Haste] was only a doubling of subjective time, so Erick would need to add in the Variable Cost Variable Effect spellwork to solve for that problem. Easy enough to do with some Blood Magic methodology.

The next problem was that the barrier which separated speedy time and normal time was too fragile; Ophiel had broken the previous version of this magic just by stepping through that barrier. So to solve this, Erick would use [Force Wall], since he couldn’t very well make another Solid Ward. This separation would ensure that nothing broke the spell’s effect.

[Ward], which was the basis for this magic, had a duration of 24 hours, so that was more than enough. [Force Wall] had a natural duration of 100 minutes. [Haste] was rather short at only lasting 10 subjective minutes, which was only 5 minutes in real time. Erick could probably solve this through some Permanency methodology, linked to the Variable Cost Variable Effect spellwork.

Having separated space locked off by a [Force Wall] would lead to air quality problems, though. Luckily, the fix for that was simple; a [Cleanse] on the interior edge of the barrier. Not fully inside, but restricted to a slice of space away from the center.

[Cleanse] had an instantaneous duration, though, which circled back to concerns over spell durations. Applying this spell constantly multiplied the cost of this magic by a lot. [Cleanse Aura] cost 10 mana per second, and this spell would be running for 10 hours, which meant a base cost of 36,000 mana. Hopefully, by restricting a [Cleanse Aura]-like spell to the interior edge of the [Force Wall] would be enough of an area reduction that the cost would be similarly reduced.

… Or?

Maybe adding in [Cleanse] wouldn’t be that bad? Erick had put [Cleanse] into a lot of his very, very large spells, like [Withering]. The aura for [Withering], [Domain of the Withering Slime], only cost 2 mana per second. That tsunami of thick air dried out every monster in its area of effect, and then [Cleanse]ed the remains.

Still only 2 mana per second.

Maybe he had done some Wizardry there—

No! Wait. Maybe he had just tapped into the call-[Cleanse] function of the Script? Erick had put a lot of [Cleanse] into a lot of magic, actually, and not many of those spells cost as much mana as they should. [Zone of Peace] was a 24 hour long spell that turned every spell that entered into a [Cleanse] of commensurate size. It had changed a bit since Erick had received the spell back from Koyabez, but it had retained that [Cleanse] function.