Chapter 4
–A Basement Adventure–
Activating my night-vision skill, I watched as Alisha finished climbing down the ladder. Once at the bottom she stepped to the side and looked up to see if I was coming or not.
"Hurry up! You're not afraid of the dark, are you?" She mocked with her hands on her hips as she called upward.
I took a deep breath and carefully descended the ladder. Was I afraid of dark places? Certainly, Raithe had his night-vision and would hunt at night, so I didn’t think Raithe was afraid of the dark. As for me, I wasn't so sure. In any case, I made it safely to the bottom without incident.
Alisha was looking at me strangely, before asking, "Hey Raithe, your eyes are glowing sorta pink. Is that normal?"
"Maybe it's because of my [Night-vision] skill?" I offered as an explanation.
Using night-vision did gather mana in my eyes, so I guessed it wouldn't be all that strange if it made my eyes glow. But, that was quite the downside when it came to sneaking around in the dark. I wondered if there was a way to make the glowing less noticeable.
"So, you can see in the dark just fine. Then does that mean you are afraid of heights?" She seemed rather fixated on my hesitancy to follow her into the maw of darkness.
"Maybe? I'm not really sure since I don't think I've been any place all that high up before…" I admitted with a shrug.
Sure, Raithe used to climb trees for hunting occasionally, but if I had to say what my personal feelings were on the matter, looking down into the basement from above certainly didn't give me a good feeling.
"Hmm, is that so… well, follow me over here and I'll show you where the magic lamps are,” Alisha said after evaluating me for a few seconds and gestured for me to follow.
My reply likely wasn't what she was expecting. Wouldn't a normal response be to deny it? So, I thought maybe she was at a loss for how to reply at first. Anyway, she seemed to have quickly recovered by resuming her role of teaching me about the chores and proceeded to lead me over toward a large wooden table set against the wall behind the ladder.
Unlike the clean and smooth floors upstairs, the basement floor felt rough and unfinished against my bare feet. It didn't feel uneven or gritty or dirt covered like the floor of a cave, but the floor's finish certainly couldn't be compared to the polished stone that was found in the house’s bathing room.
The table that Alisha lead me over to had two chairs tucked underneath and was large enough for doing crafting work. The chairs were normal adult-sized chairs and I thought Alisha's legs would likely dangle without reaching the floor if she sat in these. Lined up neatly on top of the table were several candle-holder-looking magic devices, each with a milky white crystal in place where the candle would normally go.
Alisha picked up one of the devices, and after concentrating for a moment, the crystal began to glow with a soft light. The lamp cast enough light to illuminate the medium-sized storage room that we were in, but I wouldn’t say the light produced by the lamp was particularly bright. Many places in the room were still dark, and the light from the lamp cast eerie shadows as it moved about.
Ah, maybe I don't care for dark underground places after all…
"My mom doesn't really want us to use magic in the house unsupervised, so she made these lamps for us to use when we're down here instead of casting a light spell. The same goes for cleaning. It might be easier to use magic to clean the basement rooms, but there is a lot of magic equipment and dangerous stuff down here, so it would be bad if we got blown up or messed up something important,” Alisha explained, and I nodded that I understood.
Well, the blown-up part is probably the important thing there—wait. Why are kids supposed to clean up around things that may explode? And why are dangerous things kept in the basement? Won't the house get blown up too? Ah, maybe that's why the stone for the basement ceiling was so thick when we were climbing down…
As trepidation about what I had gotten myself into began to creep into my thoughts, I tried to push it out of my mind and turned in place to take in the room.
For the most part, the room looked like how I would imagine an ordinary storage basement to look, setting aside the fact that the walls were solid rock and that there were pipes running along the ceiling toward an imposing device that was situated at the other end of the room against the left wall. Considering the drain pipes in the kitchen and the drains in the toilet and bathing rooms, that device was likely to be the composter that Alisha and Jake had both mentioned.
The composter device itself was made of metal and shaped like a barrel of more than an arm-length in diameter with a large metal box shape attached to the side about halfway up. The bottom of the box shape slanted downward as it joined into the barrel shape and a metal chute ran from the box to the ceiling. The barrel had silver rings around the upper part which caught the light from Alisha lamp. Embedded in the rings I could make out the gleam of magic crystals—one for each ring.
The entire device was supported up off the ground by thin arm-length metal struts, and tucked underneath the boxy side were two crates with what looked to be shovels and gardening tools. To the left of the device was a wheelbarrow and a step-stool. To the right was a good-sized, flat-bedded trolley.
Shifting my gaze to the opposite wall from where I was standing, the wall’s main feature was a ramp made of the same solid stone as the floor. The ramp formed a short rising hallway that led to a pair of heavy-looking iron-bound cellar doors. The sturdy cellar doors were installed at an angle that was almost horizontal, and they looked like they would be a pain to open. Near the top off the alcoved walls on either side of the ramp, a small amount of light was peeking through what appeared to be a pair of slatted metal air-vents.
Hmm, I bet the trolley is for moving heavy things up and down that ramp.
Along the right wall near the ramp were several large wooden barrels, most of which had lids, though one was open and used for holding long-poled gardening tools. Further along the wall was a long section of sturdy wood shelving supported by metal latticework. The shelving contained an assortment of sacks, crates, and various loose items, much of which were probably gardening or yard-work related.
To either side of the ladder that we just came down were hallways that had been carved into the rock and presumably leading to other rooms.
"The main thing that we have to do down here as part of our chores is to supply mana to the composter," Alisha was saying as she walked me over to the device. "See these silver rings and their crystals? Each one is a magic barrier. The one with the gray crystal is a dispelling barrier. It dispels the magically created water brought forth by the water-crystals upstairs. The light-green crystal makes a purifying barrier that removes poison and disease. It is important to replenish their mana daily—but don't try to over-fill them, okay? It would be bad if the crystal broke."
Alisha squatted down and motioned for me to the do same as she directed my attention at the underside of the composter. "There's a yellow crystal in the center underneath. That's used to rotate the mechanism which stirs the compost. Following everything so far?" She asked.
I nodded.
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She stood up and directed me around to the side with the box-like shape. There was a red crystal embedded in the side that wasn’t visible from over by the ladder. "This boxy part is an incinerator. Clippings and such from tending to the garden and the yard come down this chute to be burned in the incinerator. Food waste from the kitchen is piped into the incinerator part as well." She unlatched and opened the incinerator's front access door to show me the inside. "We can also put burnable things directly inside though here."
With the door open, there was a slight ash smell that drifted out with the disturbed air from inside the incinerator. Moving closer, I could see some leaves, twigs, and what looked to be food waste inside: fish bones, cut vegetable parts, and such.
Alisha closed up the access door before applying mana to the red crystal. I felt the heat from the incinerator almost immediately, but there wasn’t much of a burning smell. Maybe, the smoke was going back up the chute without much, if any, leaking out into the basement.
After a few moments the crystal stopped glowing and the heat dissipated. Alisha then grabbed hold of a slotted knob just below the left of the access door. She slid the knob along its inverted ‘L’ shaped slot, moving it to the right a bit and then downward toward the bottom of the sloped part of the boxy-shaped incinerator. The movement of the knob was accompanied by the sound of sliding metal and shifting ash.
"Lowering the furnace bottom dumps the ash into the composter part, just like that." Alisha said as she moved the knob up and down a few times to shake loose any remaining ash before pushing it all the way back up and latching it back into place. "Okay, Raithe, grab the stool and refill the barrier crystals while I stir the compost."
Climbing up on the stool, I got to work replenishing the mana in the barrier crystals. The crystals still had a fair amount of mana stored in them, so I used my mana-sensing and the [Status Screen] to get an idea of the amount of mana it took to fill these crystals up. While I was working on that, the composter began to vibrate and make a low rumbling sound as Alisha worked the yellow crystal. By the time I finished filling the crystals with mana, she had dropped onto her butt to rest, while looking slightly winded.
"Ugh. It sure takes a lot of mana to turn that stupid stirrer! Tomorrow, you're doing the incinerator and stirrer," Alisha complained.
Oh boy.
Hopefully it wouldn’t be a problem with my large(?) mana reserve, but the mana requirements to operate this thing were no joking matter! From my estimates, the barrier crystals were about a quarter empty and it took approximately 5 units of mana to before the crystals started resisting further infusion of mana. That meant it took around 20 units of mana to fill each crystal, and probably more than that to operate the incinerator and stirrer.
"Did your mom make this?" I asked.
"Well, the magic parts. The metal parts were made by the blacksmith. The design is Dwarven technology. Apparently, these things are needed when living underground,” Alisha answered.
"Ah, I can see how that would be important for them." Obviously when living underground fertile soil would be scarce and waste disposal would be a problem. So, it was certainly an effective solution.
"Feh. That's the other reason why we don't use magic while cleaning. We still have a few more devices to recharge, so we have to save all our mana for that." Alisha said, then rolled to her feet with a hop and stretched her arms in the air. "Hup! Good as new! Say, you all done up there?"
"Yep. Lead on." I said and stepped down from the stool to re-join the tour. Maybe this basement wasn’t going to be so scary after all.
"Hmm… let's see. Where to next…? Ah! You know, there are two rooms down here where we are actually allowed to use magic. Heh, heh," she said while dramatically placing her forefinger against her chin and half-closing her eyes as if she was thinking deeply about something.
"Okay…" My newfound optimism was quickly fading for some reason.
She went over to the shelves and took down a bucket with scrubbing tools.
"One is the dungeon. I think I'll show you that one first." She said, and I could almost hear the maniacal, dark laughter going on in her head as she made a wonderfully evil smile.
“…”
"Maybe I should have you try to scrub the bloodstains out… heh, heh, heh." She purposefully muttered to herself loud enough for me to hear as she handed me the bucket of scrubbing tools. Alisha then picked up a basket with dusting tools and started walking toward the hallway that was on the left.
…what have I gotten myself into?
I straggled behind wondering which was creepier: this dark basement that apparently had a bloodstained dungeon, or the flower girl in front of me with a smile of pure evil, laughing darkly while muttering about said bloodstained dungeon. Ugh. She had already picked up on my weakness to things dark and creepy and was definitely messing with me.
"Alisha, even though I can see in the dark, scary things are still scary, you know…" I confided.
"Is that so…" Alisha said feigning disinterest, as she looked at me from over her shoulder and said, "You coming?" She continued walking deeper into the shadowy hallway, taking the light with her.
Ah, she got me good. I'll definitely get her back for this one… just you wait, I thought as I rushed to catch up.
A little way down the hall, we came to our first set of doors.
Alisha stopped and pointed to a green wood door on the right with a gilded knocker toward the top and a hexagon-based magic inscription below. "This door is my mom's workshop. This inscription on the door is a six-element warding circle and all of the warded doors down here can only be opened by tracing a certain magic glyph on them.
“Mom is in there now working on something. As far as cleaning this room goes, we are only supposed to clean in there when she leaves the door open. And even then, it's usually just dusting and oiling the wood shelves and furniture. There's a lot of really dangerous things in there so don't do it by yourself. Come and get me if you find the door open during our morning chores."
Turning toward a solid metal door opposite Reina's workshop, Alisha continued, "On this side, the room through this door is both a vault and an armory. My parents store the weapons and treasures from their adventuring days in here as well as some items that they are storing for the Adventure's Guild. There's lots of very dangerous things in there, and we've only cleaned this room a few times that I can remember. It was always a big family event. So, don't go in there on your own."
I looked around at the walls in the area around the doors and noticed that above both doors were slotted metal air vents similar to the ones by the double cellar doors in the main storage room. The presence and placement of air vents was interesting, and I wondered why such would be necessary.
The more I looked at the walls of this basement, the more I thought there was something unnatural about this basement’s construction. While the texture on the walls, floor, and ceiling was irregular and unfinished, it was always the same, and the shaping of the stone was just too precise, with absolutely straight walls and perfect right-angle corners.
I decided to ask Alisha about it, "Say Alisha, did your mom make this basement?"
Alisha cocked her head to the side slightly and answered, "Yeah, why?"
Ah, that would explain it. "Do you know how she made it?"
"Well, from what I'm aware of, I think she excavated the rooms by transmuting the dirt to air, and then transmuted the dirt walls to stone. She probably used material shaping magic to smooth the walls and solidify the stone. But that's just my guess." She said with a shrug.
"When you think about it, isn't that somehow a rather ridiculous construction method?" I asked, incredulous.
If such a construction method were commonplace, wouldn't it be trivial to breach a castle wall just by transmuting a part of it to air?
"I guess? Well, my mom is one the top artificers in the kingdom after all, so is it really that surprising? Shall we move on to the next set of rooms?" She said with a smirk and started walking off further down the dark hallway. As I followed behind, I pondered the scale of what was possible with magic in this world.
This time we walked a fair distance further before coming to another set of two doors. Both of the doors had the same hexagonal six-element barrier inscription and door knocker as Reina's workshop, but the door colors were different. The door to the right was made from a purple wood and the door to the left was made from a reddish wood. The red door had an air vent above it just like above the door to Reina's workshop, but there was no vent above the purple door.
"I'm saving the red door as a surprise for later, but the purple door is the alchemy workshop. There's three ingredient storage cabinets and some other devices with crystals that we'll need to fill with mana, but we're almost to the dungeon, so we'll come back here next,” Alisha said and continued leading me down the corridor.
Upon reaching the end of the corridor, we were faced by a worrisome iron-bound door with a small iron-barred window just above my head height. Unlike the other doors that were latch-less and warded, this door had a normal iron door-latch with a large keyhole above it. A large set of black iron keys hung menacingly on an iron hook next to the door.
Alisha set her basket with dusting supplies down against the wall and removed the keys from the hook. She rattled them rhythmically and peeked back to see if I would react, then slotted the largest key into the door's keyhole with an ominous thunk and slowly turned the key until it clacked with a sound of metal withdrawing from the door frame.
"Are you ready? This is it," Alisha said grimly as she squeezed the latch and removed the key, giving the door a slight push and letting it slowly swing inward.
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I knew that she was just messing with me, but I couldn't help gripping the bucket's corded handle harder as the magic lamp's light slightly illuminated the cell bars within. The shadows cast by the bars upon other bars were really creepy and moved as if alive when Alisha moved while holding the lamp. The scene was scary enough that I froze up for a moment.
There were no sounds or particularly foul smells coming from the room past the door and I didn't see anything moving inside the currently visible cells. I wondered why did they even have a dungeon?
Did Reina really seem like the type to kidnap people and perform experiments on them…? Well, she does seem the researcher-type and don’t some researcher's morals get a bit twisted in the pursuit of their research. Also, I haven't met her husband, Kyle, maybe he's a real psycho… hey wait… if I misbehave or maybe even just fail to meet expectations, do I get locked up down here?
While I was thinking not-nice thoughts about my new foster family, Alisha came around behind me and started pushing me from behind.
"In you go. Hahaha!" She cackled as she started pushing me toward the room's entrance.
"Hey, Hey! If you stand behind me like that, the light is blocked, you know!" I complained, but she didn't seem to care and kept pushing me forward.
I figured that with my above average strength, I could properly resist if I wanted, but that would be like admitting that I was afraid, so I grudgingly let her push me along.
Once inside the room, it only took a quick look around the room to realize that the cages and cells were all empty. Relieved, I took a closer look around the room.
Cages of all different sizes, made of what looked like black iron bars, wrapped around the three walls other than the one we just entered from. Each cage was spaced a distance away from the other and some had what looked like stone feeding troughs formed in an L-shape. The L-shape started outside the front of the cage, passed between the bars, and followed along the front, inside the bars. Those troughs probably allowed for easy feeding by pouring slop into the trough from the outside.
On the right-hand side were three tall cages that looked more like prison cells. The center one even had chain shackles attached to the wall. The other two had stone benches that could be used as beds and a slot for passing food through.
In the center of the room was a stone post with a sturdy looking black iron chain dangling from a black iron ring mounted to the post.
Looking back toward the door, to the right of the door along the wall without cages was a stone bench not unlike the two beds in the cells. On the other side of the door and toward the corner was a sink with the now familiar blue water-crystal fixture. Under the sink was a wooden bucket sitting on a stone ledge that jutted out of the wall. The bucket was set directly beneath the sink's drain.
Seeing what looked like a crystal embedded in one of the cage bars, I walked over to the closest cage and took a closer look at it. Sure enough, they weren't simple cages. Warding glyphs similar to the ones on the doors were etched into the bars and the mana-crystals were probably used to power the wards.
Each cage had a metal plaque with a number engraved on it. The number was done in black to standout against the brass color of the metal plate. I also noticed that the floors of the cages sloped slightly toward a slotted drain in the center.
"Hey Raithe, over here," Alisha had made her way over toward the post in the center of the room and was beckoning me over.
I had a fairly good idea of what was to come, but I went over anyway.
“See! Bloodstains, bloodstains!" She said as she pointed to overlapping reddish outlines that stained the stone floor in the area near the chain. There was a faint smell of blood, but it seemed old and stale.
Hmm, I wonder if this is one of those so-called, ‘slaughtering posts’.
The stone post was similar to the ones seen in Raithe's memories that were used to slaughter large animals. While there were memories of Raithe having witnessed the slaughtering of livestock animals, it wasn't something I wanted to experience in person.
Oddly, the floor in the dungeon room was smooth instead of coarse like the floors in the other parts of the basement—no, I guessed it wasn’t so odd when thinking about how the room was used. Cleaning the floor would surely be difficult if it had a coarse texture. I wondered if our basement cleaning duties include tending to the animals and people locked in the cages…?
"This is what I need to clean?" I asked, motioning with the scrubbing bucket that I was carrying.
Might as well get it over with.
Alisha huffed disappointedly. "I guess since you're a hunter, blood doesn't bother you, huh? I was just messing with you, anyway. There's nothing in the cages, so this room is already clean," she said with a wink, and then looking down slightly shyly, she mumbled, "So what do you think? It's weird having a dungeon under your house, isn't it?"
"Well… why is the dungeon here? Some of the cages even look like they are used for people…," I asked, not really sure that I wanted to know.
"My dad is a scout and occasionally he come across a wounded animal or an unknown dangerous creature and brings it back here. My mom is a top adventurer in the Adventurer's Guild. The prison cells are for when the guild needs a place to temporarily detain someone suspicious or dangerous," she said matter-of-factly.
I sighed and let out the tension that I had been building up. It was all rather reasonable and underwhelming. Sure, it was dark down here, and being underground had put me on edge, but this is the basement of a lived-in house, not some scary house of horrors, and it certainly wasn’t a cave where monsters jump out from the shadows.
"Do we have to tend to the people or creatures when they are here?" I asked.
"People? Probably not. The only time I remember a person being locked up here, we weren't allowed to enter this room. For monsters and animals that aren't too dangerous, feeding is easy with the troughs. When it comes to the cleaning—remember what I said about this being one of the two rooms down here where we are allowed to use magic? It would be dangerous for us to clean inside the cages when monsters are in there, so we normally use magic to clean the monsters and the room."
We had spent a fair amount of time messing around down here, and I was beginning to get a little worried that we wouldn't have enough time to finish up before lunch.
“So, back to the alchemy lab?" I prompted.
"Yeah, let's get the alchemy laboratory taken care of," Alisha agreed. She picked up her basket of dusting tools and we went back to the green alchemy lab door.
"Okay, Raithe. Watch carefully how I do this, since entering these doors is a bit special,” Alisha said, making sure she had my attention.
"I guessed as much, since they don't have any door latches,” I replied and motioned for her to continue.
"Ready? Here goes." She ran her finger along the door in the pattern of a glyph. A glowing trail was left behind and when the glyph was complete, it pulsed, and the door opened slightly. "The trick is that you have to draw the glyph with mana," Alisha said as she pushed the door the rest of the way open.
While Alisha was pushing the door open, I noticed that it had a strip of fabric attached to the bottom that dragged along the room's red-dyed woolen carpet. The room's luxurious carpet was cut with a perfectly even height, and it covered the entire floor inside the room.
We entered the large room and I was amazed at the amount and variety of the equipment that lined the tables set up along every wall.
For the most part, the walls were covered with cabinets. The walls above the tables were lined with cabinets, and cabinets even separated some of the tables. The cabinet facings varied between open facings, drawers of various sizes, full wood panel doors, and doors with glass panes in them. One tall cabinet had over a hundred small drawers lined up in rows, each drawer having a hand-written label mounted to its front facing.
Near the door was a large bookshelf with large and small tomes and in the center of the room was a hefty desk piled-high with papers, scrolls, and stacks of tomes. Behind the desk was a comfortable-looking, but imposing, leather-bound chair. In places around the room, various ingredients hung in clusters suspended from thin ropes attached to hooks on the ceiling, and in the back of the room, stairs could be seen leading down to an adjacent room.
I was curious about the air in the room since the lab seemed blocked off from sharing air with the other parts of the basement. I took a few sniffs to test the air and even though the room was filled with a cacophony of herbal and non-herbal smells, somehow the air inside the room seemed fresher than in the other places of the basement.
"Be careful not to touch any of the ingredients or any equipment that has ingredients in it. Follow me to the back room and I'll show you the rest of the lab," Alisha instructed, and we descended the five carpeted steps into the adjacent room. The carpet ended with the last stair and the floor in back part of the laboratory was made of stone tile similar to what was in the bathing and toilet rooms upstairs.
I was already impressed by the first room, but this second room had the look of a facility for performing alchemy on a large scale. The near wall had racks of tapped barrels with shiny metal twist-spout spigots on one side of the stairs and storage racks with unused alchemy gear, and other supplies in jars and crates on the other.
On the adjacent wall was a cooking area with three large cauldrons next to a device with glass beakers and curving glass tubes. Several cylindrical shaped devices of varying heights occupied the remainder of that wall.
The far wall had three large metal vats with valves and pipes attached. Ladders were leaned up against the wall near the vats.
The main features of the wall closest to the direction of the dungeon room were two large copper pipes coming down from the high ceiling, a long two-level metal sink supported by thin metal legs, and a boxy device similar to the incinerator that was attached to the composter in the main storage room.
The sink started out at a normal height before angling down into a low basin and running beneath a series of numbered pipes coming out of the wall ay about thigh height. The high part of the sink had the usual blue and purple water-fixtures mounted above it.
The copper metal pipe in the left corner bent into an 'L'-shape near the floor and had a simple wire mesh grill covering it's opening. The other one connected to the sink and the boxy incinerator-looking device. Where that pipe met the ceiling were wire mesh openings as it joined with a copper hood recessed into the ceiling. Both large copper pipes had silver rings with crystals imbedded in a way that was similar to the composter in the main storage room.
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"Most of the magic equipment is in this room so that their operation doesn't affect the magic-sensitive ingredients that are stored in the other room. Starting from where the cauldrons end and going around the room, there is a distilling apparatus, pressurized distillers and centrifuges, large pressurized fermentation vats, an incinerator, the waste exhaust vent, a sink for washing the equipment, and the fresh-air vent. My mom said that the exhaust vent and the fresh-air vent are important since alchemy tends to generate a lot of toxic air," Alisha looked proud of herself as she rattled of the names of the equipment and explained the functionality of the ventilation system.
She paused to take a breath before pointing at the numbered pipes and continuing, "You see those numbered pipes? Each one corresponds to the cage of the same number in the dungeon room. Sometimes it's useful to capture the liquids and such from a particular creature, but it's also important to have a way to dispose of the filth when we wash out the cages.
"The brown crystal protects the sink from being damaged by the various things we are disposing and the purple crystal in the part of the exhaust vent attached to the sink transmutes anything that passes through it into steam—so don't stick your hand or anything important through there. Though there is a wire mesh blocking the hole to keep things we're cleaning from accidentally rolling through. The light-green crystal removes poison and disease just like the one on the composter, and the two yellow crystals move the air through the pipes."
"Gah. That's a lot of crystals. Do we have to fill them all up?" I asked. I was just starting to get my mana back up to a decent level and at this rate it's all going to be gone again.
"Well, there's nothing in the cages, and I don't think my mom has done much alchemy in the last few days. Because of that, they should be mostly full already. Thankfully we don't have to worry about the other devices in the lab. They only need mana when they are being used. The three ingredient cases with crystals in the other room will be tough, though. Well, it's fine if we can't totally fill those up, since mom probably just has us attempt those to see how much our mana reserves have improved," Alisha explained, then put her hand to her chin and half closed her eyes as if thinking about something.
"I see…well guess we'd better get to it," I responded as I walked up to the yellow crystal on the fresh-air vent.
She's got that look again. I wonder what she's scheming this time… No, wait. I probably don't want to know.
"Ah, Raithe. You didn't even break a sweat recharging the composter barriers, so you probably have a lot of mana. How about we make a deal? If you can take care of the mana for the rest of the crystals in the lab, I'll be able to show you something really cool when we do the next room. But, you'll need to have some mana left over, so it won't work if you get totally drained. Can you do it?" Alisha proposed, her eyes twinkling with a bit of impish excitement.
"Hmm… I don't know, maybe. But I can't help feeling that you're trying to trick me somehow," I responded warily.
"Aw, come on, it's not like that. I promise it'll be worth your while. I'll even teach you some magic," She held her hands up in front of her chest as she pleaded her case.
I resigned myself to being taken advantage of and sighed. "Alright, I'll give it a try, but this surprise you have planned better be good."
Alisha nodded vigorously with a big grin and replied excitedly, “It’s gonna be great! Now, which ones should I do…” Halfway through she started mumbling, rubbing her hands with glee, and chuckling darkly to herself.
Hoh, boy. This one is going to be a doozy.
Alisha had been right about the crystals here. They were still mostly full, so it took less than 5 mana units total to top them off.
Afterwards, I gave her a thumbs-up and she took me back into the other room and over to the prior-mentioned ingredient storage cabinets that needed daily refilling, all while still mumbling to herself and rubbing her hands.
The cabinets in question were all part of a single large furniture unit, a grand credenza made of beautifully stained and polished wood. The credenza's base had four columns of drawers—two in the larger, gently-curved center portion and one column each in the slightly recessed sections to either side. The drawers in the side sections were wider than those in the center, but the center part of the credenza was wider overall. The top of the credenza was similarly divided into three glass-paned display cabinets, with the center cabinet wider and deeper than the ones to either side. The exterior wood was tastefully detailed and exuded a sense of meticulous craftsmanship.
The crystals were embedded in the space below the cabinet doors. The cabinets on either side had two smaller crystals, while the central cabinet had a single large crystal. The colors from left to right were sky-blue, gray, white, red, gray. Interestingly, the center one wasn’t just white. The colors inside seemed to scatter and change depending on the angle. The glyphs that formed each barrier were on the inside of the cabinets this time.
Stretching to the tips of my toes, I peered in to see what sort of important ingredients were on the metal shelves inside. The left and right seemed to be frost and fire themed.
On the left I saw a several stalks of a green plant with brilliant blue flowers, some irregularly shaped blue crystals, three horns made of what looked to be ice, and one horn made of a grey material with a vivid blue showing though venous cracks that ran along the gray surface. Each of the items glittered spectacularly, as if covered in a very fine layer of frost.
The right-hand side had similar items, but in shades of red and black that gave off an impression of magma and flames. Though one piece in particular did catch my attention. It was a blackened rock the size of a fist with fiery red veins that pulsed like the beating of a heart.
The contents of the center cabinet with the large crystal were even more incredible, but the barrier for this cabinet was strange, and when I moved my head to the left or right to get a better look, the contents would shimmer like a mirage. There were flowers inside this cabinet as well, but they were translucent with rainbow colors. Other identifiable items were some stoppered vials and tiny iridescent insect wings. On the bottom shelf was a single red feather that shimmered with rainbow hues and had an unmoving flame licking its surface.
“These cabinets are where my mom keeps ingredients that need special storage conditions. The left cabinet is for frost-type ingredients and the right is for fire-type ingredients. The center cabinet contains things that are volatile or might disappear and are stored in a time-stop barrier,” Alisha explained as I was peering into the cabinets.
“Time-stop!? Isn’t that really high-level magic?” I asked, once again incredulous at the scale of Reina’s abilities.
“Hmm… well I guess so. But from what I’ve read it doesn’t work well on living things, so maybe it’s easier to use on non-living things?” While Alisha was answering she made an expression like she remembered something and continued, “Oh yeah, don’t stick your hands in any of those cabinets without protection—unless you want to lose them. Even my mom uses special magical gloves from the drawers below when she takes ingredients out or puts them in. Filling the crystals up for these cabinets is really hard, so it’s a real pain when my mom goes on long trips. It’s fine if you just put a little in, so don’t overdo it, okay?”
I set the bucket down and held my hand in front of the crystals for the frost cabinet. I still had almost 50 units of mana left, so depending on how ridiculous they were it might be doable.
Utilizing my mana-sensing ability, I started analyzing the crystals. I determined that each of the smaller-sized crystals had capacity for about 100 units of mana, but fortunately were only slightly over 5% depleted. Because of that, I was able to finish filling the four smaller crystals with about 25 mana or so. Still, it was tiring, and my breathing had become rougher as I sat on the carpet to rest. I updated Alisha on my progress with a slightly unsteady voice, "The side one's are done. I need to rest a bit before attempting the center one…"
"Eh? Really? You filled them up? That's incredible… hey! Wait! Stop!" she grabbed my shoulders, and at my confused look, she hurriedly said, "You're pulling in mana, aren't you?! Don't do that in here! You'll ruin the ingredients and deplete the crystals we just filled up!"
"Ah!" I gasped.
It was happening unconsciously because I had just learned how to gather mana and hadn't gained complete control over the process. But even if she told me that, it wasn’t like I knew how to just stop…
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
Concentrate. Focus.
I could feel the mana seeping into my body from the air and also being drawn in with my breathing. I must have depleted my mana from my extremities first instead of drawing it up from my core.
Maybe if I distribute mana from my core and restore the balance the problem would be solved?
I reached deep down and carefully drew out the necessary mana and distributed the flow around my body until it felt that I had achieved a uniform distribution and equalized the pressure with the outside. My breathing calmed, and my head felt clearer. Somehow, I felt like I'd taken an important step forward in my ability to control the mana within my body.
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"Good job, Raithe. Seems like you figured something out. I think it has stopped." Alisha let go my shoulders and breathed out a sigh of relief.
The situation was fine now, but I was only able to stop the flow because I had enough mana to balance out the difference between the mana inside my body and the mana outside. If I continued to use up my mana and no longer had enough to maintain the balance, the mana would start seeping in again. Also, I'd have to continually adjust the density of the mana to match the surroundings, which sounded troublesome.
I wondered if there was a way I could use the movement of the mana at the edge of my body to block mana from coming in or out even if the density was different.
"Yeah, it should be okay now, but I think there might be a better approach. I'll be careful, so give me a minute or two try something out," I said as I deepened my meditation.
I focused on moving the flow of mana on the edges of my skin faster in a uniform direction, round and round, faster and faster. It was really hard to direct the flow over all the changing directions of my body. Eventually, I managed a decent job of it, but the result was different than what I had expected.
As the mana in the air came into contact with me, it began flowing in a similar direction to the flows on the edges of my skin as if pulled along by the adjacent flow, and with the Wind property of the surrounding mana, the air around me began to flow as well. I quickly changed strategies as I noticed that a small tornado was going to form around me if I didn't stop. Fortunately, it had only reached the point of blowing my clothes and hair around with a gentle breeze.
"Uhm… Raithe?" Alisha called out worriedly.
Since going in a uniform direction would just stir up the air, maybe if I used smaller chaotic flows it would be okay?
I focused on dividing the flow up into as many small distinct flows as I could and tried to move them all in random patterns. Whirl and slither, smaller, smaller. It was crazy hard, but I concentrated harder and focused on making the flows as tight as possible.
The tighter I made the flows, the more the density increased, making the mana-density along the boundary of my body no longer uniform with what was flowing inside. I wasn't sure if the disparity in mana-density was helpful or problematic, but I continued anyway.
Focus. Focus.
The mana around me began to move chaotically in response to what I was doing, but another unexpected result happened: The mana in the air began to churn, and as I focused the flows even smaller, the air began to vibrate. My clothes and hair writhed as if possessing lives of their own, and a powerful hum began to fill the air around me.
"RAITHE…this is not the best place to be experimenting. Think about what you are sitting in front of…" Alisha's extremely worried voice came to me from outside my focus.
I slowed the flow and evened it out again.
Ah, it's no good. And takes way too much concentration… ah, wait. Maybe the flow isn't the trick.
While concentrating on making tiny flows I had become more aware of the boundary of my body, and the mana had become denser there. Thinking about it, I realized that if I gathered a higher density of mana along that boundary, then it might not matter whether my mana-density was lower inside. The result would be kinda like making a barrier of mana—and the thickness of such a barrier might not matter either. So, the thinner I could make it, the less mana would be needed.
Adding elemental attributes to the mana seemed like a promising idea as well… once I learn how to add elemental attributes in the first place. For now, I decided to keep it simple.
I focused.
Denser, thinner, denser, thinner.
Ugh, it's hard to breathe if I cover my lungs, so I'll try to just cover the gaps formed by my nose and mouth—that way is easier anyway.
Denser, thinner.
"Ah Raithe…? The mana isn't going crazy anymore, but your hair… and skin are starting to glow… I think…"
Oops. Seems I overdid it again. But I think this is the right answer.
I reduced the mana-barrier to a level that was easy to maintain, and while keeping the barrier at that level, I tried lowering my internal mana lower than the ambient mana while feeling for any external flow. The mana was stable. There was no seepage at all. I raised a small cheer of victory in my mind.
The question now was: how practical would the barrier be to maintain? I slowly relaxed my concentration and the barrier stayed in place reasonably well. Even if I stopped concentrating on it entirely, the barrier still seemed to stay in place for a short period of time before gradually dissipating back to normal.
The conclusion was that until I practiced enough to get used to maintaining the barrier naturally, all I had to do was concentrate some and tighten up the density periodically as needed.
I opened my eyes to see Alisha sitting in front of me looking concerned.
"Sorry about that. I worried you," I apologized.
"So, what happened?" she asked looking me directly in the eyes.
I looked down, embarrassed, and began explaining what I had figured out, "Well, your mom just taught me about meditation and gathering mana, so I've been mainly gathering mana and pushing it down into my core. I was circulating it around to cultivate the mana-pathways, but even then, I was just returning it to my core for storage."
I paused to make sure Alisha was following, and she nodded for me to continue, but her eyes were sure getting round as she listened. I continued on with my explanation, "And so, as we were going around filling up the crystals, I've just been pushing mana out from the mana circulating in my body instead of drawing it up from my core…"
"No way…," Alisha said in disbelief.
"This time when I filled the crystals, the level of mana circulating around my body dropped lower than the ambient mana-level in the air and so an imbalance was created. The mana in the air was pulled into my body to normalize the imbalance,” I explained.
"Just how high is your [Arcane Power] and your magic-affinity that your body's mana-deficiency sucks mana out of the air on its own?! I assume you solved it by just distributing some of your reserve mana around, right?" She paused waiting for my confirmation, and I nodded, so she continued on, "So what the heck was going on when you made the mana in the room go all crazy?! You know, we're lucky that all that crazy mana didn't set off some kind of reaction with something in here!"
"Well… I knew I still had to put mana in the time-stop crystal, and I was worried about becoming unbalanced again if I used up too much mana… so I was trying out different ways of moving my surface mana around to see if I could block the outside mana from getting sucked in…"
"Haa…," Alisha explosively sighed in exasperation, then grabbed me by my horns and forcibly turned my head to face her. "Idiot! You could have asked me! It's not like I don't know anything about magic, you know! Besides, you could have really injured yourself making your mana go all crazy like that." She let go my horns and continued in a gentler tone, "So you figured it out, didn't you? What was the solution you came up with?"
I was a bit shocked by Alisha's passion, and I wondered why I tried to figure it out on my own when I could have just asked her. Surely, her mom had been teaching her magic for years already by now. It was stupid, just like she said. Oh well, it worked out this time, and I learned something useful.
"Moving the mana around on the surface caused the mess like you saw and wasn't particularly helpful, but I figured out that by gathering and increasing the density of the mana on surface, I could create a kind of barrier that blocked the mana from coming inside even if my internal mana was low," I said, explaining my discovery.
"I see. So, you managed to figure out how to create a mana-barrier on your own—and you did it in a matter of minutes. I'm a bit jealous, I think. Well, want to test it out?" Alisha asked with more than a bit of rivalry showing in her eyes.
"Uhm… I guess?" I wasn't sure this was such a good idea, but it would be good to know if I was doing the mana-barrier right.
"Are you still actively maintaining your barrier?" She asked.
I nodded.
"Then hold out your hand. I'll try to force my mana through the barrier around your hand, and you'll use your barrier to repel it." She held her hand in the air slightly above mine and asked, "Ready?"
I reinforced the barrier in my hand and nodded.
"Okay, here I go."
I closed my eyes, so that I could better sense her mana as she attacked. The first flow of mana came against the barrier and flowed off to either side. She then drew the mana back and reshaped it for the next attack. The mana-shaping felt somewhat clumsy, but as she reorganized it into a hammer shape, I felt its character change. This was something I felt before when I was learning mana-sensing from Reina. Earth!
I reinforced the barrier just in time as the hammer made of Earth-mana collided with it. The impact left my fingers numb but the mana didn't penetrate.
"Oww… " I shook my hand out a bit. "Is that good enough?"
"Yeah. It's really impressive for just learning it. How is it that you can do this stuff so easily? By the way, just like I just did with my attack, you can apply different elemental properties to the barrier, which can be useful depending on what you're trying to block. Earth is sturdy and good for blocking physical attacks; Water is cooling and good for reducing damage from fire attacks, for example. Oh, but don't do anything stupid like putting Fire-element on your barrier. You'll burn your skin off and probably die. Fire and Wind barriers work better outside the body." Alisha advised me and had a slightly frustrated look as she stood up.
“That’s good to know. Thanks." I was honestly appreciative for the advice.
Alisha nodded. "Sure. In any case, let go to the next room." A smirk was starting to appear on her face as she mentioned the next room.
"Ah, wait. I still need to do the time-stop one," I said hurriedly while getting up.
Alisha was already halfway to the door, and seemed surprised enough that her mask slipped a little as she replied, "Huh? You're still going to try? Even with what happened? If you don't have any mana left afterward, I'm not going to be able to have any fun… er… I mean… fine. I already told you that it's fine not to fill it up, so just don't pass out okay?"
Hey, hey. I know she's up to something but I'm beginning to wonder if this girl is seriously twisted on the inside…
Well, whatever. Time to focus.
As I approached the time-stop crystal, this time I drew up most of my remaining mana from my core before trying to fill the crystal. The crystal probably had a capacity close to 250 mana. But, with the crystal only being slightly depleted like the others, I was able to refill it with only a 16 mana or so expenditure. I'd used up some mana in the experiments earlier so according to status window I was down to 5 mana.
I was exhausted, but I was able maintain the barrier and to keep the rest of the mana evenly distributed throughout my body, so I avoided the problem from before. After taking a deep breath and letting my breathing even out, I showed Alisha an ‘OK’ sign and declared victory, "Totally full."
Her jaw dropped open in shock, "Haa…. You're kidding me, aren't you?"
"Well if I'm a faerie-kin, isn't at least this much to be expected?" I couldn't help myself, my triumphant sneer was starting to come out. I was too tired to care and, besides, it was my complete victory.
I won. Heh, heh, heh.
"Aww, that's not fair. Oy, oy. If you gloat like that, I'm going to wonder if the cute innocent Raithe is just an act, you know? Besides, I've still got a chance to show you up. Let's get going, you antlered, pink-haired jerk,” Alisha grumbled, half in jest.
I joined her over by the door, "Ah, I'm hurt. And from my own sister, too."
"Oh, stuff it. Now pay attention. I'm going to show you the glyph to open the door again. You're going to use it to open the next one,” Alisha warned, her smirk having returned as she prepared to open the door.
Somehow, even though it was obvious that Alisha had a terrible attitude toward work, she was being strangely diligent about her mentoring duties. I watched carefully as she drew the glyph for a second time, allowing us to exit back into the corridor, after which, the door closed behind us and resealed itself automatically.
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