‘Woah, over 800’000 experience points for the next level?’ John thought. He was currently checking his status, after the last Assault had concluded. Truthfully, he could have easily churned out another level by going in there for another three hours. It was getting late, however, so he decided not to.
Anyway, the experience requirement rising wasn’t entirely surprising. It tended to jump every 5 levels. Nevertheless, John couldn’t help but wonder if Gaia was pushing it up because she wanted to indirectly nerf the Assault mechanic. Either that or he had gotten Assault before he was ‘supposed’ to and currently it was way too effective. Not that it mattered, fact was that John had to deal with it.
‘I am, like a good gamer should, going to cheese this thing in any way possible,’ he told himself as he closed his status sheet. At least his current goal, 250 Wisdom, was only 2 levels away now. Progress was steady.
“Hey, Jo- …master,” Momo started and corrected herself as Aclysia sent her a stern glance. The forced saying of the title just did not have the same vibe to it. The artificial guardian gave her sister a pleased pat. “Mhm, this is nice,” the support hummed as the soft caressing of her head continued.
“I copied this technique from our master, he gives the best pats,” Aclysia told everyone before retracting her hand; “Now state your business.”
“What are you, his secretary?” Momo asked.
“I am whatever Master wants me to be. I am uncertain whether or not I should acquire a secretary outfit in case he wants me to fulfil the role,” she looked over to John with a puzzled look.
“That’s a pretty good question,” John admitted; “I mean, you are currently in a maid outfit that doubles down as cosplay of a battle-android. While violating cosplay is a sin, the thought of putting you into a secretary outfit with a tight miniskirt is very appealing…”
“I will acquire a sexy secretary outfit at a later date,” Aclysia remarked with a little bow.
“Okay, that is great and all…” Momo spoke up again, “but…”
“Just don’t make it too sexy. You should still be able to go out in it,” John reminded her.
“Understood, removing stripper level designs from list of imagined outfits,” the weaponized maid answered.
“For heaven’s sake, listen to me!” Momo almost shouted and pushed her e-reader into John’s face; “Read this, you sleazy pervert.” His eyes were already flying over the page. The letters were so tiny that they would barely qualify as readable for young people, while folks with worse eyes would have only seen a bunch of lines.
Luckily, John had superhuman senses, even though sight wasn’t his strongest suit. He needed to make it one size bigger to read it without slipping on the lines every few words.
“Interesting,” John finally muttered when he was halfway done. It was a report about Abyssal metals and their usages. He had planned to get informed on this front himself, purely to know what was currently inside Aclysia in detail, but between grinding sessions, he had been reading up on history instead. He was tired of asking questions all the time.
Momo had marked a part towards the end. Thanks to him messing with the size, it spanned over to the next page as well. He finished reading and then gestured for Momo to take the e-reader down. The information Momo had wanted to show him had been concerning the strongest metals in the Abyss. He was already aware that Astrotium, the incredibly rare metal found inside meteorites, was the hardest thing around. After that was Mithril, which was hard to find but not impossible.
Mithril was sometimes created within creatures of naturally occurring barriers, like stone dragons. In essence, the supply was endless, but it was hard to find and dangerous to mine.
Few people were particularly interested in fighting dragons and then cutting out their bones. The profits were probably the only thing that kept people in that line of work. Dragon meat was also worth a lot.
Problem was that one also always had to gamble on running into a lesser dragon, the kind that was actually an animal. Normal dragons, possessing only a shallow intellect, were also huntable but considerably more powerful. Higher dragons, the thing that Nathalia had been before she had ascended to godhood, were something most people stayed as far away from as was possible.
All other metals were then categorized into the same six ones that soul types could be put in: Earth, Fire, Air, Water, Light and Dark or a mixture of those six. Blank materials did not exist, except that they did, except that they didn’t. ‘Stupid non-existence stuff,’ John thought and just accepted that they did not not exist.
There were also a couple of lesser Mithril alloys which generally were labelled as ‘Arcane’ as they were filled with raw power rather than an elemental property.
Metals of the elemental kinds could be created by infusing actual real metals with magic until they changed into something new. That was basically what happened inside Aclysia passively: her body just enriched materials with magic until they ascended to a higher level.
‘The strongest kinds of materials are the ones that have a balance of all elements or are solely and completely comprised of one. Elementium, the blending of all six elements into one metal, is the third strongest metal known to the Abyss. Is that so?’ John repeated the last part in his thoughts. “Good job finding that.”
“I just stumbled over it and thought you might find it interesting,” the monochrome girl answered.
“Also, you want to test if we can do that?” he guessed.
“Yup,” Momo confirmed. “Shouldn’t be that hard, right?”
John wasn’t sure about that. It was possible, courtesy of him having the Combo Perk, allowing his elementals to combine their powers in one shape or another. Whether that made it easy or not was a different question.
“Time to buy some basic iron off the auction, I guess,” John said and pulled out his phone.
Iron was cheap, and the curiosity dwelled within. If he could synthesize Elementium, that would make him rich within days. A few minutes later, half a kilo of the basic metal was dumped off on the island via drone. It came inside a simple cardboard box and was cut into small cubes, all exactly the same size. Very orderly, John approved.
“Let’s start with the basics,” John said, taking one of the small iron cubes and holding it out in his palm. “Gnome, Sylph, Undine, Salamander, if you would,” he instructed them.
“Would what?” Sylph asked and earned herself a tap against the back of her head by Salamander.
“Infuse those things with our energies, you dunce!” the fire spirit reprimanded.
“But, uh, how?” Sylph asked.
“The same way you use air to attack!” Salamander reprimanded, but Sylph just kept looking confused.
“Urgh… just follow Gnome’s lead.”
“M-mine?” Gnome was startled.
“Of course yours!” the fire spirit threw her arms into the air in frustration; “You should know the best how to do this: it’s metal, you are an earth elemental.”
“I mean… I have never worked with metal before…” Gnome mumbled.
“You will manage,” Undine offered a word of encouragement in her melodic voice. It had taken a good few minutes of Momo and Siena talking to the ocean elemental to calm her down after she had used her Unleash earlier. By now, she was back to her usual self.
The stone elemental kneaded the edge of her skirt, then carefully took the small block of iron from John. Undine and Salamander put one of their hands on her shoulder while Sylph, on the opposite side, held the other hand each in her own, creating a circle through which they were all linked.
‘So far, so up to description,’ John thought and turned to Momo. “How much mana should we need for that cube, any rough estimates?” he asked.
The support shrugged, “Not the faintest clue. I guess we can check if our mana numbers are equal to the standardized mana-measurement in Maybel.”
Maybel was the standardized unit for mana measurement and named after the one who made the unit up, a Simmelera Maybel. She was a woman that had lived during the Enlightenment period. Pretty smart, but not particularly blessed with talent, she had done her research and standardized a lot of things which had been previously described in a myriad of different units. In the eyes of the public, her greatest achievement was the blueprint that served as the foundation for the modern mana factory. She had died at the age of 73.
One of those supernatural scientists that were entirely Abyssal. The majority of them were, it just stood out a lot when a historical and Abyssal figure were the same.
“Okay, if we work under that assumption…” John agreed and did the calculation himself, the book did have the formula. It went as follows: Weight in gram times the Elemental Infusion Constant (8,44) to the power of elements involved divided by 10. “About 500 Mana per gram? Christ, nothing in this world comes cheap, does it? The description on the site said one of these cubes is 50 grams, that’s 25’000 mana!”
“25371,1288448 mana, to be exact,” Momo pointed out.
“That’s overly detailed, just 25372 is enough, thank you. I mean, in all fairness, I should actually measure these things and calculate whether the cubes mass is exactly 50 grams in the first place… I think Aclysia’s head is about to explode from all this math.”
“I-I can follow!” Aclysia defended herself. “I just don’t have to deal with things that aren’t basic addition very often...”
“It’s all good,” John couldn’t help but chuckle a little as he said that; “Just leave the math to me and Momo. We have the luxury to invest so many points into brainwork thanks to you working as hard as you do on the front lines.”
“As you request, Master,” she answered with a relieved breath and mildly sour expression.
She was fine with being of use primarily in one area, but being useless in another rubbed her the wrong way. John was not about to raise her Intellect just for the niche case of her helping him with math he could easily solve himself. Instead, he kissed her and grabbed her butt, that usually lifted her mood. It was a resounding success.
“Okay, so, command retracted, we need to cut down that block to size first… anybody got a very sensitive scale?” Of course, they didn’t. John had to buy one off the Abyss Auction. “I swear their transportation fees are about 90% of the cost,” he mumbled, five minutes later, as they cut the cube down in size until they had a 10-gram heavy, linear piece. “Okay, so that’s 5075 mana, under the assumption that MP are equal to Maybel,” John said. “And we have a total of… I don’t even know.” Momo had a mana pool of 4639, which was by far the highest of their whole group. It was also down to 1248 thanks to them relying on her mana to do things inside the Assault and her having a considerably lower mana regeneration.
John’s storage of 1480 mana was topped off. Together they had about 2700 mana right now, would the elementals be able to provide the remaining roughly 2400 mana? Probably. For the sake of science, John should go ahead and find out whether his assumption about MP = Maybel was true or not.
So, he bought himself a Maybel measurement tool. A third time, a drone came over. “For science,” he mumbled to himself to justify his expenses. “Okay then,” John took the measurement tool, a thing that reminded him of a magic wand from the Harry Potter movies, and gripped it by the thick end. He concentrated on letting exactly 100 mana flow into the magical tool.
The wand glowed blue and then used the mana he put into it to display the number 100. “Okay, so, confirmed, Maybel equals MP,” John noted and tossed the thing into his inventory to probably never be used again.
“Okay, then, let’s transmute around, shall we?” John said, and all of their combined mana went into the 10 grams of iron. Fire and lighting danced over the surface of the little piece as it seemingly rusted in a split second, only for the rust to then vanish and leave a bronze piece of metal behind.
“That was surprisingly easy,” John said, “Mana report?”
“Tapped,” Salamander said.
“I-I have nothing,” Gnome agreed.
“Uhm, I think I still have some?” Sylph said.
“I am fine,” Undine mumbled.
He didn’t need to ask for himself or Momo, they were both dry wells.
“So that’s Elementium?” Aclysia asked as John took the small thing from Gnome.
“What? Oh no, this is Baelementium,” John needed a moment to understand the confusion. Aclysia must have been staying out of his thoughts. As per usual, she just wanted to hear him talk. Good thing he loved talking to her, “Elementium is the blending of all 6 elements. Baelementium is the form with just the base for elements. Basic Elementium, typical scientist moment, just give lazy names to things.”
“And the mana costs for this are still pretty humane,” Momo added as John stored the thing in his inventory; “507422,57… 507423 is manageable.”
“How is that manageable?” Aclysia asked, wheezing at the sheer number.
“Because the formula increases exponentially with the amount of elementals involved,” John explained. “For a kilo of true Elementium, we would need 36 million mana. Therefore, by comparison, it is manageable.”
John truly appreciated that his dad had taught him to work with metric units in moments like this. All these calculations would have been a terror if he had to make them in imperial units. Just one last question remained. The hell did Elemental Potential do?
“That concludes that experiment.”
‘Woah, over 800’000 experience points for the next level?’ John thought. He was currently checking his status, after the last Assault had concluded. Truthfully, he could have easily churned out another level by going in there for another three hours. It was getting late, however, so he decided not to.
Anyway, the experience requirement rising wasn’t entirely surprising. It tended to jump every 5 levels. Nevertheless, John couldn’t help but wonder if Gaia was pushing it up because she wanted to indirectly nerf the Assault mechanic. Either that or he had gotten Assault before he was ‘supposed’ to and currently it was way too effective. Not that it mattered, fact was that John had to deal with it.
‘I am, like a good gamer should, going to cheese this thing in any way possible,’ he told himself as he closed his status sheet. At least his current goal, 250 Wisdom, was only 2 levels away now. Progress was steady.
“Hey, Jo- …master,” Momo started and corrected herself as Aclysia sent her a stern glance. The forced saying of the title just did not have the same vibe to it. The artificial guardian gave her sister a pleased pat. “Mhm, this is nice,” the support hummed as the soft caressing of her head continued.
“I copied this technique from our master, he gives the best pats,” Aclysia told everyone before retracting her hand; “Now state your business.”
“What are you, his secretary?” Momo asked.
“I am whatever Master wants me to be. I am uncertain whether or not I should acquire a secretary outfit in case he wants me to fulfil the role,” she looked over to John with a puzzled look.
“That’s a pretty good question,” John admitted; “I mean, you are currently in a maid outfit that doubles down as cosplay of a battle-android. While violating cosplay is a sin, the thought of putting you into a secretary outfit with a tight miniskirt is very appealing…”
“I will acquire a sexy secretary outfit at a later date,” Aclysia remarked with a little bow.
“Okay, that is great and all…” Momo spoke up again, “but…”
“Just don’t make it too sexy. You should still be able to go out in it,” John reminded her.
“Understood, removing stripper level designs from list of imagined outfits,” the weaponized maid answered.
“For heaven’s sake, listen to me!” Momo almost shouted and pushed her e-reader into John’s face; “Read this, you sleazy pervert.” His eyes were already flying over the page. The letters were so tiny that they would barely qualify as readable for young people, while folks with worse eyes would have only seen a bunch of lines.
Luckily, John had superhuman senses, even though sight wasn’t his strongest suit. He needed to make it one size bigger to read it without slipping on the lines every few words.
“Interesting,” John finally muttered when he was halfway done. It was a report about Abyssal metals and their usages. He had planned to get informed on this front himself, purely to know what was currently inside Aclysia in detail, but between grinding sessions, he had been reading up on history instead. He was tired of asking questions all the time.
Momo had marked a part towards the end. Thanks to him messing with the size, it spanned over to the next page as well. He finished reading and then gestured for Momo to take the e-reader down. The information Momo had wanted to show him had been concerning the strongest metals in the Abyss. He was already aware that Astrotium, the incredibly rare metal found inside meteorites, was the hardest thing around. After that was Mithril, which was hard to find but not impossible.
Mithril was sometimes created within creatures of naturally occurring barriers, like stone dragons. In essence, the supply was endless, but it was hard to find and dangerous to mine.
Few people were particularly interested in fighting dragons and then cutting out their bones. The profits were probably the only thing that kept people in that line of work. Dragon meat was also worth a lot.
Problem was that one also always had to gamble on running into a lesser dragon, the kind that was actually an animal. Normal dragons, possessing only a shallow intellect, were also huntable but considerably more powerful. Higher dragons, the thing that Nathalia had been before she had ascended to godhood, were something most people stayed as far away from as was possible.
All other metals were then categorized into the same six ones that soul types could be put in: Earth, Fire, Air, Water, Light and Dark or a mixture of those six. Blank materials did not exist, except that they did, except that they didn’t. ‘Stupid non-existence stuff,’ John thought and just accepted that they did not not exist.
There were also a couple of lesser Mithril alloys which generally were labelled as ‘Arcane’ as they were filled with raw power rather than an elemental property.
Metals of the elemental kinds could be created by infusing actual real metals with magic until they changed into something new. That was basically what happened inside Aclysia passively: her body just enriched materials with magic until they ascended to a higher level.
‘The strongest kinds of materials are the ones that have a balance of all elements or are solely and completely comprised of one. Elementium, the blending of all six elements into one metal, is the third strongest metal known to the Abyss. Is that so?’ John repeated the last part in his thoughts. “Good job finding that.”
“I just stumbled over it and thought you might find it interesting,” the monochrome girl answered.
“Also, you want to test if we can do that?” he guessed.
“Yup,” Momo confirmed. “Shouldn’t be that hard, right?”
John wasn’t sure about that. It was possible, courtesy of him having the Combo Perk, allowing his elementals to combine their powers in one shape or another. Whether that made it easy or not was a different question.
“Time to buy some basic iron off the auction, I guess,” John said and pulled out his phone.
Iron was cheap, and the curiosity dwelled within. If he could synthesize Elementium, that would make him rich within days. A few minutes later, half a kilo of the basic metal was dumped off on the island via drone. It came inside a simple cardboard box and was cut into small cubes, all exactly the same size. Very orderly, John approved.
“Let’s start with the basics,” John said, taking one of the small iron cubes and holding it out in his palm. “Gnome, Sylph, Undine, Salamander, if you would,” he instructed them.
“Would what?” Sylph asked and earned herself a tap against the back of her head by Salamander.
“Infuse those things with our energies, you dunce!” the fire spirit reprimanded.
“But, uh, how?” Sylph asked.
“The same way you use air to attack!” Salamander reprimanded, but Sylph just kept looking confused.
“Urgh… just follow Gnome’s lead.”
“M-mine?” Gnome was startled.
“Of course yours!” the fire spirit threw her arms into the air in frustration; “You should know the best how to do this: it’s metal, you are an earth elemental.”
“I mean… I have never worked with metal before…” Gnome mumbled.
“You will manage,” Undine offered a word of encouragement in her melodic voice. It had taken a good few minutes of Momo and Siena talking to the ocean elemental to calm her down after she had used her Unleash earlier. By now, she was back to her usual self.
The stone elemental kneaded the edge of her skirt, then carefully took the small block of iron from John. Undine and Salamander put one of their hands on her shoulder while Sylph, on the opposite side, held the other hand each in her own, creating a circle through which they were all linked.
‘So far, so up to description,’ John thought and turned to Momo. “How much mana should we need for that cube, any rough estimates?” he asked.
The support shrugged, “Not the faintest clue. I guess we can check if our mana numbers are equal to the standardized mana-measurement in Maybel.”
Maybel was the standardized unit for mana measurement and named after the one who made the unit up, a Simmelera Maybel. She was a woman that had lived during the Enlightenment period. Pretty smart, but not particularly blessed with talent, she had done her research and standardized a lot of things which had been previously described in a myriad of different units. In the eyes of the public, her greatest achievement was the blueprint that served as the foundation for the modern mana factory. She had died at the age of 73.
One of those supernatural scientists that were entirely Abyssal. The majority of them were, it just stood out a lot when a historical and Abyssal figure were the same.
“Okay, if we work under that assumption…” John agreed and did the calculation himself, the book did have the formula. It went as follows: Weight in gram times the Elemental Infusion Constant (8,44) to the power of elements involved divided by 10. “About 500 Mana per gram? Christ, nothing in this world comes cheap, does it? The description on the site said one of these cubes is 50 grams, that’s 25’000 mana!”
“25371,1288448 mana, to be exact,” Momo pointed out.
“That’s overly detailed, just 25372 is enough, thank you. I mean, in all fairness, I should actually measure these things and calculate whether the cubes mass is exactly 50 grams in the first place… I think Aclysia’s head is about to explode from all this math.”
“I-I can follow!” Aclysia defended herself. “I just don’t have to deal with things that aren’t basic addition very often...”
“It’s all good,” John couldn’t help but chuckle a little as he said that; “Just leave the math to me and Momo. We have the luxury to invest so many points into brainwork thanks to you working as hard as you do on the front lines.”
“As you request, Master,” she answered with a relieved breath and mildly sour expression.
She was fine with being of use primarily in one area, but being useless in another rubbed her the wrong way. John was not about to raise her Intellect just for the niche case of her helping him with math he could easily solve himself. Instead, he kissed her and grabbed her butt, that usually lifted her mood. It was a resounding success.
“Okay, so, command retracted, we need to cut down that block to size first… anybody got a very sensitive scale?” Of course, they didn’t. John had to buy one off the Abyss Auction. “I swear their transportation fees are about 90% of the cost,” he mumbled, five minutes later, as they cut the cube down in size until they had a 10-gram heavy, linear piece. “Okay, so that’s 5075 mana, under the assumption that MP are equal to Maybel,” John said. “And we have a total of… I don’t even know.” Momo had a mana pool of 4639, which was by far the highest of their whole group. It was also down to 1248 thanks to them relying on her mana to do things inside the Assault and her having a considerably lower mana regeneration.
John’s storage of 1480 mana was topped off. Together they had about 2700 mana right now, would the elementals be able to provide the remaining roughly 2400 mana? Probably. For the sake of science, John should go ahead and find out whether his assumption about MP = Maybel was true or not.
So, he bought himself a Maybel measurement tool. A third time, a drone came over. “For science,” he mumbled to himself to justify his expenses. “Okay then,” John took the measurement tool, a thing that reminded him of a magic wand from the Harry Potter movies, and gripped it by the thick end. He concentrated on letting exactly 100 mana flow into the magical tool.
The wand glowed blue and then used the mana he put into it to display the number 100. “Okay, so, confirmed, Maybel equals MP,” John noted and tossed the thing into his inventory to probably never be used again.
“Okay, then, let’s transmute around, shall we?” John said, and all of their combined mana went into the 10 grams of iron. Fire and lighting danced over the surface of the little piece as it seemingly rusted in a split second, only for the rust to then vanish and leave a bronze piece of metal behind.
“That was surprisingly easy,” John said, “Mana report?”
“Tapped,” Salamander said.
“I-I have nothing,” Gnome agreed.
“Uhm, I think I still have some?” Sylph said.
“I am fine,” Undine mumbled.
He didn’t need to ask for himself or Momo, they were both dry wells.
“So that’s Elementium?” Aclysia asked as John took the small thing from Gnome.
“What? Oh no, this is Baelementium,” John needed a moment to understand the confusion. Aclysia must have been staying out of his thoughts. As per usual, she just wanted to hear him talk. Good thing he loved talking to her, “Elementium is the blending of all 6 elements. Baelementium is the form with just the base for elements. Basic Elementium, typical scientist moment, just give lazy names to things.”
“And the mana costs for this are still pretty humane,” Momo added as John stored the thing in his inventory; “507422,57… 507423 is manageable.”
“How is that manageable?” Aclysia asked, wheezing at the sheer number.
“Because the formula increases exponentially with the amount of elementals involved,” John explained. “For a kilo of true Elementium, we would need 36 million mana. Therefore, by comparison, it is manageable.”
John truly appreciated that his dad had taught him to work with metric units in moments like this. All these calculations would have been a terror if he had to make them in imperial units. Just one last question remained. The hell did Elemental Potential do?
“That concludes that experiment.”
