P-03. Trial By Magic, page 26
part #3 of PrimeVerse Series
I found a boulder to sit on and took inventory of my cores. I had a couple deer cores, a handful of rabbit cores, a dozen hill bear cores, a bunch of gross mothsquito larva cores, a few regular mothsquito cores, and of course my flunky cores, but I wouldn’t be using those today. A good amount to get started with.
I figured it’d be best to start small, and pulled out a bunny core and a larva core. As gross as the larva had been, cores seemed to be a plentiful drop from them.
I activated Mystic Sense and concentrated on merging the two cores. Intention is everything, right? With that thought in mind, I pushed the cores together.
You have combined cores!
A new menu opened in front of me. On the left was the rabbit core and on the right the larva core. The middle was taken up by a stat screen up top with a list of all the abilities and features of the two creatures. Below that was what I could only describe as a similar menu to a ship-building menu in a space style game. It was blank, and I slid the rabbit core onto it. Instantly, an outline of a rabbit appeared, with each individual section outlined with tiny dots, appearing removable.
I tried pulling off a leg, and it worked, leaving the rabbit as a three-legged thing. As soon as I dropped the leg off screen, a button appeared on the bottom right asking if I wanted to complete the changes.
I ignored the button and dragged the leg back, reattaching the limb. Then I slid the core of the larva on top. The outline changed drastically. Instead of the cute little bunny, there was a strange-looking creature, like a ferret with no legs, but a rabbit head, complete with a mandible that was much larger than on the regular larva. The stats up above changed, keyword abilities greying out.
I fiddled around with the outline, selecting legs from one of the keywords and adding them to the design. It looked more like a rabbit now, albeit with an elongated, segmented torso, and the mandibles.
I added the ears back on and the accept button turned red. I took the ears off and it changed back to green. Putting the ears back, I pressed the red button and got a system message.
Combination exceeds parameters of core, reduce in power.
Ah, so that button being red or green was my gauge for keeping combinations within the strength of the core. Interesting.
Curious, I took the ears back off and accepted the changes. The combine window disappeared, and a system message popped up.
Name your creation.
“Uh.” I thought for a minute, not feeling inspired. “Experiment 1.” The two cores I had been holding merged into a single core within my hands, striped through with the colors of the two previous. I grinned.
I summoned the creature, the familiar light pouring out of the core, and it appeared before me. It was not pretty. The furry body attempted to inch along like a caterpillar, but the huge hind legs propelled it faster than its body could handle, and it flailed about accomplishing nothing. Maybe there was a reason people shouldn’t play God. Yikes.
This whole combining creatures thing was going to take some work to come up with anything good. With a sigh, I unsummoned my failed experiment and settled in for a long day.
***
“Hey there, handsome.” Madison smiled as she came and sat down beside me on the hill above the cave. It had kind of become ‘our spot’ since we’d been back with The Ascendants. “I was wondering where you were. What’re you doing up here?”
I returned her smile and focused back on my work. “Still just messing around with these cores, trying to figure everything out and level my skill. They might be the best thing I have going for me, but I’m not using them to their full potential.” I summoned one of my many failed experiments to show her. A mostly larva with the head of a rabbit. It appeared and inched its way along to a loose leaf of grass, happily munching away at it. I had found it was best to keep most of a single creature type and only mix in a little of the other. It seemed to make things less... useless.
“Some things I made were relative successes, they were functional creatures, but were worthless for anything like combat.” I mean, everything I could summon could be used in some way, like I had done with the burning larva on the male mothsquito, but there was useful, and then there was useful.
“Well, that's weird,” she said, watching the strange thing eat. “I believe in you, though. The Adjudicator wouldn’t have given you these Core abilities if it felt like you couldn't make the best of them.”
Light flashed from my hands as I unsummoned the experiment.
“You’re sweet,” I said, kissing her cheek. “But I need to be doing more.”
“If we’re honest with ourselves, we all could be doing more. It’s a hard balance between enjoying the life we have and only playing the game.”
“That’s true. But while I’m enjoying life here, way more than I ever thought I would really, with Cora looming, our friends and mayor kidnapped, my hand is forced to the latter. Once she’s out of the picture, I think we can enjoy life a lot more.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Win the core lottery? I need about a billion more. I’ve made some decent advances in my skills, both Core Mastery and Core Manipulation. Summoning new things is great for raising Core Manipulation. But to keep leveling the skill, I’m going to keep needing more cores. Once I’ve combined cores, I can’t combine them any further, so the cores I’ve made are essentially useless. I have no idea what I’m going to do with them. What I do know is, I don’t want to spend all my time in the woods hunting for cores.”
“Why don’t we ask the team leaders to make sure they keep an eye out? Honestly, it could be a great way to get experience. You'd get the cores as a bonus.”
“We can, and probably should, but I can’t just take the cores. I have to pay to remove the soulbound nature so I can have them. It costs XP, not a lot, but it still will add up.”
“Could be a start, though,” she said, way more positive than I was feeling. “And you’re no stranger to losing XP.” She winked.
“Could be,” I agreed, ignoring her second comment.
“Want me to ask them?”
“Sure,” I said, but when she moved to get up, I stopped her. She was being so sweet and I was being cranky. “Stay up here with me a little longer and keep me company?” I gave her my most convincing grin.
“For you? Anything.” She pulled me by the collar of my tunic to her face and kissed me deeply. I got lost in the kiss, in her lips and her hair and the moment. I don’t know how much time passed, but when we pulled apart her face was flushed, her hair a tangled mess, and I was out of breath.
“I could get used to this kind of company.” I grinned, my lips still tingling from her touch.
She winked at me. “You worried me for a bit. When you didn’t show up for dinner, I thought you disappeared.”
“Sorry, I wasn’t very hungry, and I just wanted some time and space to work on this stuff. The enclave is great, but I was feeling cooped up.” I paused, allowing the silence between us for a few minutes.
My mind was racing, but I knew I could trust her. We had a solid relationship, even without the romance. I swallowed hard.
“To be honest, Madison, I’m feeling overwhelmed about the whole Cora thing. I don’t know how to stop her. Even if we kill her, it doesn’t matter, she’ll just come back. Over and over she’ll come back. And she’s just getting more and more powerful. What are we going to do?”
She played with my hair at the nape of my neck that was getting too long for my liking. “I don’t know, Hudson. But I know you’ll figure something out. You’ve always got something up your sleeve.”
I sighed. “Maybe. I just have to keep getting stronger. I wish I had a ton of cores, but I’m down to just a few.”
Madison was silent, staring out across the valley and the village below us. Suddenly she jumped up, which made me jump too.
“Hudson,” she said.
“Madson,” I responded.
“You can get cores from any animal, right?”
“Yeah, any creature I kill.”
“Does it matter if the cores are super low level?”
“I mean, at some point, yes, but right now I just need cores to practice and experiment with.”
“Okay, I have an idea.” Her eyes glittered with excitement.
“Well, let’s hear it.”
“At dinner tonight- the one you missed- Deja was talking about how our little rabbit population has exploded and how she wants to let some into the wild. Apparently, they breed so fast that we can’t even eat them quick enough and they’re outgrowing their enclosure.”
“Who’s Deja?”
“Ugh, Hudson, pay attention! Do you get what I’m saying?”
“Deja wants to let our bunnies go. How rude.”
“Sometimes I just can’t even with you. The village has too many bunnies. Bunnies have cores. You don’t have enough cores.”
“Ooooh, now I’m diggin’ your taters.”
“I’m done.” She stood up and started walking away. I burst into a fit of laughter, and chased after her, grabbing her arm. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll be done. Please come back.”
“You drive me insane,” she said.
“You love it.” She ignored me.
“What do you think of my idea?” she asked.
“Murderous rabbit rampage and refill my cores? I think you’re a genius.”
“Seriously, though. It wouldn’t even be a one-time thing. She said they breed so quickly it’s nuts. I don’t know the specifics, but it sounds like you could have a brand new haul of cores weekly.”
“How many rabbits are we talking about?” I asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but it sounds like they’ve got a couple hundred down there now.”
“Woah, you weren’t kidding. That’s a lot of rabbits.”
“Come on, let’s go talk to Deja and see what she thinks.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the hill.
“Okay, but who is going to tell the bunnies I’m the grim reaper?”
As we walked back down, I was pleasantly surprised to see a couple of very basic tiny houses in the process of being built. We really were coming together well.
It didn’t take long to find Deja, who was conveniently feeding the rabbits. She wasn’t wrong- there were a ton of them in the fenced area. Like, an entire sea of them. Or maybe a pond.
She wasn’t completely sold on the idea. But she said at least half needed to go one way or another and if we wanted to kill them for their cores we could, she insisted we didn’t do it in the pen. I didn’t understand it, but I could deal with it. I guess bunnies don’t like watching other bunnies die.
Madison asked if it could become routine; if anytime the rabbits needed a population decrease, we could use them for my core experiments. Deja agreed.
The next day we set out to harvest rabbit cores. In my head I pictured it a straightforward task. Quick little spell, bye bye bunny, hello core. But not being able to do it in the pen was proving tricky.
After taking rabbits out of the pen two at a time, going around the corner, doing the deed and coming back for more, I realized we had to come up with another plan.
We sat in the middle of the bunny sea, thinking.
“Should we just do it when she isn’t watching?” I asked. Madison gave me the look. Okay, hard no.
“Can we carry them in our inventory?” she asked. A second passed and she answered her own question. “Nope.”
“There’s got to be a better way to do this. Fill one of the well buckets with bunnies?” I suggested.
“I highly doubt anyone is going to want rabbit poop in the water buckets,” Madison said.
We sat quietly watching the little creatures. They were kind of cute. A white one, with a single black patch around its eye, seemed to be hopping with purpose when a large rock was in its path and it hopped sideways to avoid it.
“Aha!” I shouted, startling about fifty rabbits in fifty different directions. “Earth manipulation! I’ll make a pen on the other side of the fence out of dirt a couple blocks high, then we can just toss ‘em in and their friends won’t be able to watch!”
I watched Madison mull it over in her brain for a second. “I think that just might work,” she said, sounding almost surprised. Sometimes I had good ideas.
I quickly built my dirt pen, making it as wide as their current fence. I stacked a couple blocks high so I could still easily climb over, but the rabbits would be stuck inside. Then we played rabbit rodeo and ran around catching as many as we could. Some of those little suckers were fast, those got to live longer.
At first we set them down tenderly, but when we realized how long that would take, we started tossing them in. We were gentle about it; we aren’t monsters. I had to chuckle when I thought what this must look like- us darting around after the critters and then said critter flying through the air.
When we had gathered around half of the little buggers, it was time to get down and dirty. I zapped the first few with a fire spell, which killed them instantly, but the smell of burning hair and flesh was unbearable. I moved to the ice spell, which had the same effect minus the nose burning odor. But having to touch each one, then wait for the spell to reload, it was still going to take too long.
I tried my Poison spell next. The dirt pen filled with green gas, and within seconds, all the rabbits were toast. Bingo!
With a hundred rabbit corpses littering the ground, I set about collecting cores. This took longer than the slaughtering, and by the end after looting and even some Lucky Finds, I had 89 cores and 33 Lucky Rabbit’s Feet. I had no idea what I’d do with those. But the cores? That was a killer haul.
Literally.
Madison had decided not to stay around for the slaughter, but I knew she’d be excited with how many cores I’d gotten and I’d have to remember to thank her again for the idea.
Chapter 33
The next few days went by in a blur of activity. People coming and going, building supplies being brought in and stacked up, and a generally positive feeling settled over the village. We had a purpose now, and with Graham directing people, we were accomplishing our goals efficiently.
I had spent hours and hours working on my Core skills. It was slow going, as the level of cores I was using was so low. I was about to start using the sparse bear and mothsquito cores I had, when on my first attempt to combine a hill bear with a rabbit, bumped me to 20 in Core Mastery and I got another milestone.
Core Item -
You can now combine cores with items to grant the item a permanent enchantment related to an aspect of the core. Consumes the core and XP relative to the level of core used.
I sat there, stunned, as I thought of the ramifications of this. I could enchant items using cores. I could make magic items! Sure, it would cost XP, but I could make magic items! I was so excited I immediately pulled out one of my rabbit cores and thought of something I could combine it with. My first thought was my boots, since you know, rabbits and jumping.
I pulled my boots off and physically, and mentally, tried to combine the rabbit core with them. I grinned as the combine window opened up. Instead of two cores on either side, however, there was simply the outline of my boots, and the list of aspects the rabbit core contained. Many of the aspects were greyed out, but the aspect I had been hoping for, Jumping, was not. I slid it onto the boots and the accept button lit up green.
I hit the button and a bright yellow light surrounded the boots, then was absorbed into them. The boots grew short fur and my notification box lit up indicating I had gained a level in Core Mastery.
This was so cool.
I inspected my new magic boots.
Core boots of the Bunny
+5 to jumping
Nice! Not like a huge boost or anything, and the name really sucked, but I made a magic item!
I put them on and ran and took a jump, like a toddler with new shoes, noticing that yeah, I was able to jump a little further than usual. I think. It was hard to tell, but I figured if it was something that stacked, it could be really useful.
I wanted to find Madison so I could show her. Not only could I make magic items, but I could continue to level up my Core Mastery by doing so. Maybe this was just the kind of edge we needed in the upcoming battle.
I found her where she usually was now, in the enclave helping people with their magic skills. She spent almost every moment there, helping people, making spells or studying magic. It was a whole other side of her that was a wonder to see. She was in her element teaching. Minuitt had made a brilliant choice with her.
“Madison!” I yelled as I ran in. “Give me your boots!”
She paused her teaching to the couple of villagers, and they dropped the spells they had been holding. “Uh, what?” she asked, looking at me like I’d gone a little crazy.
“Your boots! Let me see them!” I was so excited.
She looked at the villagers and held up a hand to me. “Guys, if you'll excuse me a moment? Go on outside and continue practicing, see how you can make the spell your own.”
The villagers grinned and one wiggled their eyebrows at me as they walked out of the enclave. I swear I heard one mumble, “So is that what they’re calling it these days?” I shut the door behind them.
“Okay, Huddy, what in the world are you talking about?”
“I can make magic items!” I shouted and pulled my boots off, tossing them to her. She picked them up and studied them for a moment before gently setting them down in front of me.
“Is this why the Adjudicator wanted you to have that skill?”
“I don't know, but it certainly could change things up. Can you imagine if we had everyone in enchanted gear? It could help a ton against an enemy force. Now, your boots! Gimmie!”
She still wasn’t moving. “How many things have you made?” she asked.
“Just these,” I pointed to my boots. She didn’t look impressed.
