Chapter 221: Business as usual (Patreon)

After several hours of debate, Calvin took Two tiers of Bulk Split, then Atom Ant. His Dupdomancy skills had never been about long term solutions to problems, it had been about effective solutions to pressing issues. With Atom Ant, he could create equipment that was up to forty-five times stronger than it had any right to be, allowing him more power and flexibility.

He tried it against Karen and was pleased to note that she couldn’t easily tear through Abyssal Steel reinforced by the Ability. Read: Easily.

It took her some effort.

The last two Ability slots he saved for emergencies and mutations to the skill. Like before, there was always the possibility there would be some kind of overlap that he couldn’t pass up.

Moving onto the next Skill.

Sense Grafting has reached level 45!

+1 Intuition

Please choose five abilities and/or Mutations.

Omniscient Grafting: The User can now graft senses without losing their own, as well as create and process multiple inputs simultaneously.

Calvinian Spycraft: 1 Bent to Link senses to summoned creatures.

A mile in their shoes: User copies any number of senses from a target onto themselves, allowing them to experience what the target is experiencing.

Proprioception: User instinctively knows the physical distance and direction between themselves and all subjects of the spell.

Desensitize: reduce chosen sense from mild weakening to complete deprivation.

Mutations:

Gaze into the Abyss: See from the perspective of any creature observing the User. May cause headaches without Omniscient Grafting

^unlocked by Third Eye and Feel Intent

Compensation: Sacrifice a sense at will to boost another drastically. Reversable.

7th,8th,9th Sense needs seven more senses added, Calvin thought, making a note and circling it as the thought popped up. He had night vision and Tarak Skin, but there were seven empty slots he could steal from exotic animals. 

I wonder if I could have stolen the brain worm’s perception of time.

I wouldn’t suggest it. Your meat body simply couldn’t handle it.

Let’s see, Five points, and seven available abilities, two of which are mutations. Can I still have mutations? I’m not alive.

I don’t think the Warp gives a shit.

Okay, all of them look good, so all I really need to do is elimate two and take the rest.

Omniscient Grafting is a keeper. It makes using it in combat much more of a manageable thing.

Calvinian Spycraft is good too, I could experience what my summons are doing without being forced to use Heart of the Swarm

A Mile in their shoes….Sounds like a lot of fun during sex.

Dude. You wanna fuck yourself?

You masturbate with your own hand, don’t you? 

Hah, that’s an SNL skit.

Proprioperception was nice but not super necessary. Calvin put it on the short list to be removed.

Desensitize was good offensively. He could use it to black out someone’s vision or hearing or what have you with a snap of a finger.

Then there’s gaze into the Abyss, and Compensation.

Hmmm….

Calvin’s ability to feel people looking at him had always come in handy. If he knew exactly what they were doing, that would be even better.

On the other hand, compensation was handy. Calvin could picture himself temporary snuffing out his sense of taste to enhance his hearing or vision, allowing him to pick up things he had no right to.

After some waffling, he decided to toss Compensation out in the cold.

If it came to examining things incredibly closely or incredibly distant, he could always have a summoned creature do it for him.

Calvin chose Omniscient Grafting, Calvinian Spycraft, A Mile in their shoes, Desensitize, and Gaze Into The Abyss.

Once Calvin’s stint of unconsciousness was over, he struggled to get used to Gaze Into The Abyss.

He felt like a thousand-eyed spider, his thousand eyes constantly blinking open and closed whenever someone looked at him or looked away from him.

He saw himself from a new angle every time someone glanced at him, and it was disconcerting.

He never had any intent to do so, but it felt vain, like he was preening in front of a mirror. He even found himself shifting his posture a little bit as people looked at him.

Do I really look like that when I slouch?

Apparently.

Without Omnescient Grafting, He most likely would have been overwhelmed from the flood of viewpoints constantly streaming through his head. Even so, it took time to get used to it.

It was especially disconcerting to note how much more men glanced at his crotch than women.

It’s a scientific fact!

Calvin called it a day on the Ability selection and resumed business as usual.

So how’s the plastic production going? Calvin asked Kurawe.

Less than ideal, Ravager. The knick-knacks ran into problems upscaling the ‘emitters’ you gave them. It seems the Bent cost of running the larger emitters is actually worse than the smaller ones. The Bent value lost puts us at a disadvantage, from a production standpoint.

Bent has a value?

Of course it does. On average, one Bent for a second Break laborer is the equivalent of eight hours labor. The purifying process takes sixteen passes of Bent to make a chunk of plastic the size of a dinner plate.

There are many more factors at play on a larger scale, and Murak could go into great depth, but suffice to say we are spending too many man-hours of labor in order to produce this ‘plastic’.

The competition, beeswax, requires no Bent overhead to produce, and Bent can be spent to make it a superior product.

We’re going to have to approach this from two angles, Calvin thought as he strode through his tower. First, let’s see if we can create some filtering techniques that reduces our reliance on the Emitters for the first stages, then let’s see if there’s a way to power the emitter with less Bent. Or no Bent at all, for that matter.

We have already begun, Ravager. The Ooze weavers are a practical people, and have taken to technology quickly.

Excellent. 

Thought of the Ooze-weavers made him think of Y’kuingi and her stay in Calvin’s March. It would have ended quite a while ago.

I wonder how they’re doing.

“How would you guys like to visit Y’kuingi?” Calvin asked, glancing at Ella, Learner, and Kala. “I’m going to go see how the plastic production is coming.”

“Sounds boring. I’m out.”

“I’d love to see if I can put the things I’ve learned about electricity to use,” Kala said, her face flushed with enthusiasm.

Ella glanced over at the dusky princess, brows raised. “I’m in.”

Calvin frowned at the savage, who shrugged with a mischievous smirk. 

“I would like to study Ooze weaver physiology more. I suspect they are not a naturally occurring species. Do you think they’ll allow me to vivisect one of them?” Learner asked, her eyes wide and glittering in the lamplight.

“No.” Calvin said. “I do not think they’ll allow that.”

“Phoo.” Learner huffed, crossing her arms and pouting. “I told you,” she muttered to herself and glancing aside.

***

Calvin gave Ella and Kala a ride on a wasp, and Learner flew herself, their destination the lake the Ooze weavers made their village around.

The trip was a quick fifteen minute jaunt through the sky, but hiking the dense jungle would have taken days

There were massive differences in the lakeshore village already.

Being the chief producer of Calvin’s new product, the Ooze weavers were naturally the ones with the most supply of it.

Since the material was refined from their own ooze, they felt no compunctions about incorporating it in nearly every aspect of their daily lives.

Calvin spotted huts whose joints were bound together with stiff plastic, he saw human tools whose handles had been supplemented by grips made of plastic that fitted the creature’s foot-pincers better.

There were nets set up in various parts of the lake, new inventions designed to manage their fish population more effectively. 

There was even a massive grill being manned by a dozen male Ooze-weaver, surrounded by what seemed like a party-atmosphere of dozens of Ooze weavers stopping by for the food they churned out at a feverish pace.

Male ooze-weavers were smaller and dumber, but they weren’t animals. They were more than able to handle tasks that didn’t require a lot of strength or brains, so you never saw them in leadership or hard labor positions, but cooking food? That fit them like a glove.

As for what they was cooking on, it was a huge, flat piece of steel imported from the Juntai homeland, complete with a large Bent generator off to the side, with its own massive flywheel.

Ooze weaver loved cooked fish, but Hated smoke. Y’kuingi must have somehow bartered to have some Juntai electric grills brought over, then converted to use Bent to create electricity directly…

Who did that??

Kala, maybe? The Emitters, the knick-knacks, and those hunter killers from a couple years ago all use Bent-to-electric engines, so I think they could have adapted one. The problem would be finding one.

I wonder how much plastic it cost. Calvin couldn’t even imagine how many tons of plastic it would have taken to convince the Juntai to part with such a heavy-duty piece of technology.

So much trade and advancement is happening even without me. Just from putting these people in contact with each other.

Neat, isn’t it? Elliot said.

In the distance, he spotted yet another hut being erected, and swooped down from the sky to observe. The Ooze-Weaver spotted Calvin’s party but didn’t gawk for long, returning to their job with a professional spirit.

The architect poured a jug of purified slime into a hollow joint, pressing the two corners of the hut into the goop, which rose up around them. Then she pulled an emitter out from her toolbelt and held it over the joint. Calvin felt an inaudible whine, and in moments, the plastic froze into a hard white solid, securing the poles permanently.

Goddamn, Todd must’ve done it. He recreated the recipe.

What? Calvin asked.

Todd Spendle was one of my contemporaries. Like me, he was a Biomancer, although drastically more altruistic than I was. He was always trying to recreate plastic – the good kind of plastic, not the petroleum stuff -  I’m pretty sure these Ooze weavers are an unintended side effect of his project.

I understood maybe half of that.

I sometimes wondered what happened to him. Pretty sure he’s dead, but he’d probably be really thrilled to know not only did he succeed, he created a sapient species.

Is that important? Calvin asked.

Just like every chemist secretly wants to blow stuff up, every biologist secretly wants to make a creature that can carry a conversation. Damn the consequences.

Can you really assign a secret desire to every profession?

Scientists are defined by their fetishes, so yes. You should see some of the crazy shit mathematicians get up to. It involves numbers.

Calvin chuckled at the joke and stepped closer to the newly cemented joint, squatting down and putting his hand over the newly formed plastic. It was warm to the touch, and felt interesting against his fingernail when he scratched it.

Tough but smooth, and just the tiniest bit little yielding.

“I absolutely love the idea of using it to create instant molds or bonds between surfaces.” Calvin said aloud. He turned to the carpenter. “How long will it last?” He asked in their tongue.

The creature gave the equivalent of a shrug. “longer than the wood it’s holding together, is all we know. The first pieces we ever made had been left to weather in harsh conditions,” She said, motioning to the lake, where Calvin could make out some net poles bonded together with plastic.

“We’ll have to replace the poles before we replace the bond.” She said, pride radiating from her voice. “The People have made something from our Binding that can be given to future generations. We are ecstatic beyond compare. If you’ll excuse me, I have to finish this home for the gravid mother, my lord.”

‘Lord’ was clumsily spoken in Gadveran, and the Ooze-weaver’s foreleg rose in something like a salute before it moved on.

I guess these are my people, too… Calvin thought. Y’kuingi had brought back more than a few tidbits of information. The intelligent young Ooze-weaver must have persuaded them that they would benefit from subordinating themselves to him.

Now you have to consummate your arrangement by marrying their princess!

Not you too, Calvin thought, rolling his eyes.

“As amusing as you all think it would be, I for one do not want some half-ooze weaver brats running around.”

“I think they’d be cute.” Kala said with a shrug.

“I think they would a mucus problem,” Ella said.

“There’s no question.” Learner said. “They would likely even have spinners coming out of their noses and malformed, rubbery bones.”

The three of them gave Learner a grimace. The eldritch horror shrugged.

“That’s what would happen, at least based on my samples.”

“What samples!?” Calvin demanded.

“Oh please, humans leave their genetics all over the place. If you don’t like it, you should stop spraying your DNA all over everything….” She blinked. “That was mom. I personally voted against doing…that.”

Learner wrinkled her mouth and nose as if recalling something less than pleasant.