Celestial Hymn 49 (Patreon)

Celestial Hymn

Chapter 49

-VB-

Instead of staying at Brownspear, I moved a lot of my facilities to King’s Landing to be next to Myrcella. In part, I wanted to make sure nothing else happened to her. For another, I wanted to control what was actually going on in King’s Landing.

However, any and all material and research that was to be used for FTL drive remained in Brownspear, where any attempt to sabotage will be … let’s just say discouraged via esoteric means.

One of my first Forge-bestowed powers, the crystal magic from Warcraft, had been used to create constructs. I imagined that not a lot of soldiers and knights would be willing to fight my golems. But creating those crystal golems had taken me a week, even with the help of my acolytes, which had left Myrcella and Tommen exposed outside of my protection. It was during this week that another assassination attempt had been made!

Like, fucking hell.

It was why I was now experimenting, crafting, and manufacturing less important everything right here in King’s Landing and not in Brownspear.

“Uh, master?”

I looked up from where I had been working on inscribing multiple runes into a quartz block, a future core for a more refined guard golem.

It was … uh … who was it again? Damn it, I have too many acolytes now! I should make a magic that shows me their names or something. Or nicknames.

“What is it?” I asked.

“We -”

“We can use magic!” the livelier of the two, a shorter of the two girls (women?), blurted out.

It took me a moment to get what they were saying. See, there was a difference between using magic tools and using magic. This was something I made clear to all of the acolytes once before and many times after they joined. They knew it and I knew it, and so their words had significant meaning when they declared that, especially since they each had multiple magic tools.

Magic tools were kind of like a status symbol among the acolytes, I found out. Since there was a significant emphasis on making your own tools beyond the bare basics, the more tools they had, the more experience and time the acolyte invested into my magic cabal.

“Show me,” I said.

The taller of the two girls placed her magic tools off to the side and then held up her hands. I watched not just with my eyes but also with my sorcery, detecting the flow of mana in and around us.

And I watched in amazement as mana, originating not from the environment or the tools but from within her, surged through her body, through her arms, and then out into the world as a ball of light.

Unimaginative but a show of magic nonetheless.

The shortie did the same, setting her tools aside, and then making a ball of water. It was a much smaller ball compared to the ball of light made by the taller girl, but it was still magic.

I grinned.

“Well then,” I said. “Names?”

“Nasha,” the shortie said with a huff and a grin. “Master.”

“This one is called Reara, master,” the tall one replied.

I hadn’t expected this to happen. Or rather didn’t think about the implications of letting people work with magic tools leading to real magicians.

‘This was … a wonderful advancement. Oh, sure. I’ll probably abandon most of the acolytes here when I leave, but while I was still here? It provided me with fascinating data to work with. At what concentration of atmospheric mana did this occur? Can it be readily replicated? Can I -?

And then I noticed something else.

…

I frowned.

The source of the mana.

It was … it was them yet not.

Hmm?

Hmm?

Hmm?

“... did you guys have sex in my workshop?”

Both of them did a spit-take.

“I mean, I’m asking because … that’s not your magic,” I grinned. “Congratulations, by the way. Both of you seem like you are pregnant. Who’s the father?” Then I frowned. “Great. Now, I gotta make rules about sex in work place. I’m probably gonna have to give sex education lectures, too…”

The two girls became beat red in seconds and stuttered out gibberish.

Yes, it was not the girls who were magical but the growing fetuses within them. Again, how did that happen?

… Did the act of sexual penetration help to literally push ambient mana into the womb? Mana was not exactly a phantasmal material that phases through matter; skin was more than enough to block out low concentration of mana like the ambient mana in the air. It was why blood widely in this verse must have been used because it was one of the few materials that could hold mana and magic.

… Wait, didn’t that mean that, technically, magic was everywhere?

Holy shit, Planetos was a high-magic world masquerading a low-magic world!

“Well, we’ll do some experiments later,” I said to the girls. “Make sure to eat and drink a lot before you come in tomorrow, okay? Oh, and bring whomever was your sex partner, too. If you need someone to officiate a wedding, I can do it as a lord.”

The Forge activated again, and I found myself looking forward to what it might give me.

And then it dropped a mace with a hovering sphere into my hands. I knew its name. Ginnungagap. A world item.

… Huh?

Then I felt giddy. This was … this item, by itself, was a powerful weapon that didn’t need me to build or modify in some way. It was a weapon from a game turned reality. I could feel the mana wafting off of it like a tidal wave.

So enamored by the weapon, I did not notice the suddenly terrified looks the girls had before they scurried out of the room nor did I notice the rumor that began to circulate until I left my Red Keep workshop two days after.

-VB-

Perk gained this chapter:

12.03 Guild-Linked World Item (200)
The Great Tomb of Nazarick contains the Throne of Kings, a World Item(and the throne in the throne room)that protects the entirety of the guild base against all attempts at scrying or anti-scrying attacks, and that further generates a small amount of Yggdrasil gold coins any time someone within would be subjected to such, alongside several other effects. Your guild base also possesses a World Item of similar potency integrated into it, and you may purchase this option multiple times.
Maybe you possess the Rainbow Bridge, which forbids all hostile forms of spatial manipulation within the guild base, while simultaneously providing unparalleled mobility to your own forces that pass through it, allowing them to quickly appear across any distance and even breach dimensional borders, and allowing them to quickly return once finished with whatever task they were set.
Perhaps instead your guild base contains within it the Garden of Eden, a place said to contain at least a single copy of every plant (or plant like thing) in the entire world, and often many many times more than that for more common things, regrowing within a day anything that is taken. To say nothing of the mighty plant-based creatures that spawn from it that will help to defend your guild base, or how you could harvest from it constantly to feed an immense population.
Or perhaps instead your guild base possesses an entrance to the legendary Agartha, a subterranean city long abandoned but filled with such mineral wealth that it could be mined forever, with an ore vein for every type of metal or precious stone one could imagine no matter how rare that replenish a mere day after excavation.
If those don't tickle your interest, perhaps you will find the Scholomance to be to your liking? A school of dark and forbidden magic, filled with the knowledge of every spell imaginable, and that allows unparalleled control and manipulation of the weather and empowers the magic of all rightful inhabitants of the Guild Base while they are inside.
Or maybe none of these things appeal, and you have a different idea in mind? So long as it is not one of The Twenty (ie: expendable 1-time effects), and so long as it remains entirely tied to the Guild Base itself, you may instead come up with your own World Item, with appropriate effects to apply to your base. In such cases, fanwank as appropriate.