Chapter 74. Boil it Down
Rhys knelt by the glue cauldron. He injected mana into the water and bones, even tried to push the intent to become glue onto the bones, but nothing took. His intent slid right off the bones. They had once been alive, and they were full of such complex intents and emotions that there was no room for his desires, let alone a desire that pushed them toward total deterioration. It was a truth that gave Rhys other ideas, but for now, he put those ideas in the back of his mind. He was already flirting with curses and curse power. He didn’t need to add necromancy—ahem, trashromancy—to the pile before the all-important tournament where he had to fairly beat Ernesto’s champion.
Intent didn’t work. Just adding mana didn’t do much except push the water to boil hotter, which was helpful, but the cost-value-time ratio simply wasn’t there. He needed something else. Something that pushed these bones to transform and melt, rather than just sit here and slowly bubble. Something more intense than either intent or mana.
He skimmed through his trash-related skills. This wasn’t the time for Trash Body. Trash Intent had already failed. Trash Step, likewise, not the time. Trash Manipulation, Enchanting, and Talk all had no place here. The only thing he could think of as working at all was Trash Aura.
Trash Aura was the part of Trash Intent he could project outward. Trash Intent helped him draw out the form of the trash’s intent, or enforce his intent on trash, and Trash Aura was the next step. The skill that allowed him to take that intent and project it outward. It was equivalent to shooting sword light off a sword; essentially, firing a blast of mana and power from the weapon in the form of an immaterial aura that took the form of the thing he was firing it from. Therefore, it was the next step of Trash Intent. Trash Intent let him wrap trash with energy, and even let it resume a new form, and Trash Aura then projected that outward.
Given that he couldn’t use Trash Intent on the bones, Trash Aura seemed to not fit, but on the other hand, wasn’t it ideal in this situation? If he didn’t try to use Trash Intent to enforce his will on the trash, but simply let it assume any form, then fired off that intent into the pot…
Rhys hovered his hand over the bones. The two skills activated in quick succession, Trash Intent, then Trash Aura. The bones all took the forms they wanted to in thin energy projections, whether they longed to be whole limbs, whole bones, or even a whole skeleton, all of them crammed into the tiny pot, then shot that energy into the pot, depleting their own intent to fire the aura. The auras slammed into the bones, and the bones broke. It was like using a hundred mortars and pestles all at once to hammer the bones into pieces, but he let the bones do all the work for him. Again, and again. As the bones broke into smaller pieces, the combination grew more effective, and the bones broke down smaller and smaller, until Rhys couldn’t grip them with intent anymore.
It no longer mattered, at that point. The mana-enhanced boiling water quickly softened the bone shards, and he used the mana, and Trash Manipulation, to crush the shards even smaller and churn the gruel into paste. When the granules got too small for that to work, Rhys stirred the glue with a scrap of wood, using Trash Intent to extend the stick into the sticky mixture so it couldn’t cling to it.
He grabbed the paper, took a bit of the glue, and laminated the foil onto the paper. It was the pages of an old book, with bits of some kind of scripture on it, not that Rhys cared. Taking another page, he repeated the actions, then added a bit of glue to the very edges and glued the two together. Rhys looked up, glancing over at Bast. “The chips ready yet?”
“Got a few,” Bast replied, thumbing over his shoulder. A veritable mountain of chips piled atop the fluffy cloth.
Now that’s mage-worthy efficiency. Gods, if I could bring the Industrial Revolution here… Then again, it wouldn’t do anything, would it? The Industrial Revolution was all about working together and using machines to accomplish what one man could not, but Bast had just done an industrial quantity of chip production in an hour or so, all on his own, as a martial artist and not even a mage. If he added machines, he would probably only slow Bast down, rather than speed him up. At best, he’d unlock a marginal speed-up, some real diminishing returns-level of breakthrough. If he didn’t have Bast, or any helper, it might have been worth it just from a laziness perspective, but as it was, he might as well use this whole scenario as training toward the next Tier, using techniques and skills, exercising his mana, and expanding his speed and dexterity, rather than waste his time building machines that would do nothing to raise his Tier.
Rhys tried one. Tingle of mana, perfectly salted, delicious! He nodded. “Good work.” Holding his bag open, he used Trash Manipulation to put a quantity of chips inside, then sealed it shut with a bit more glue. He handed it to Bast. “Open it with a minimum of strength.”
Bast nodded. He gripped the bag and tore it from the edge. The foil and paper ripped easily enough. “It was easy. Shouldn’t be a problem.”