Chapter 552 - Construction (Patreon)

Six years after the Eventide Eclipse returned from the Phoenix Peaks

The Celestial Supper was just as good as the first time I’d walked through its doors… by Ciriel, almost two decades ago. I was still slightly torn between ‘comforting familiarity’ as the insides of the restaurant remained unchanged all this time, and ‘eerie stasis’ as it remained exactly unchanged. I had to wonder - would I change my mind in the future, and go straight to ‘comforting familiarity’? Only time would tell, and I was content to sit back and let it happen.

I flickered through the room, subtly flexing on everyone that I could just [Teleport] rapidly from spot to spot to get to where I was going. I stuck to the normal ‘walking’ path and tried to make it clear where I was coming from and going to - didn’t want anyone jumping and losing their very expensive meal - but I could teleport eight times in a second, and I recovered enough mana to teleport just under every seven seconds. 

Grinding out [Teleportation] levels was a bear.

Another fun little trick I could pull was scanning everyone as I flashed by them in a single burst of [The World Around Me] repositioning. I [Teleported] a few coins into one particularly empty purse, figuring it was my good deed for the day, and multi-tasking so many different things at once was novel enough for experience.

No dings though. I was all too aware a lifetime of levels usually ended up at less than half my current level, and most of those lifetimes were spent on their skills as well. Still, every little bit counted! Even an ant could eat an entire mango if they were determined enough.

And somehow avoided my attention for long enough to eat it. Some insects and animals in my orchard were good, improving things and generally net increasing the number of mangos I got, but not all of them. Part of the perfection of mangos included their thick skin, which meant even if they fell on the ground they were still perfectly edible. Truly, the gods and nature combined had outdone themselves when creating mangos.

With one last careful [Teleport] I snapped into the War Sentinel’s room, already sitting in my chair. Nobody blinked an eye at my abrupt entrance - more’s the shame, I was hoping I’d get one of them to jump one of these days. At the same time, nobody really managed to sneak up on a Sentinel. We all had our tricks, and the Sentinels who didn’t have good situational awareness were in the graveyards.

I sniffed at the food, my mouth drooling at the scent of spices.

“Dawn! Welcome! We’re doing a meat barbeque today, thought it’d be fun.” Sentinel Tyrannus said. “No pork for you, no fish because of Depths, and select dinosaurs are excluded due to Queen.”

I grinned as I [Teleported] samples of all the dishes onto my plate, piling it high, remembering the big favor Depths had done for all of us.

Auri, the bird brain, had forgotten about her messenger capsule, but Iona had brought it back with her. Some careful questioning and investigation had revealed that there truly was an entire fucking ocean worth of real water inside the little capsule, which made it one of the deadliest items in the world. For various reasons, Iona couldn’t simply offer it up to the Moon Goddesses, and Ciriel didn’t want it. I would’ve gotten a dozen levels as a [Loremaster] dealing with it, but I’d moved away from that class. Instead, Depths had undertaken a perilous journey to the bottom of the ocean, where the great hole was. She’d dodged krakens and wrestled sharks, grabbed treasure between two leviathans fighting and tricked a siren before finally tossing it in, forever removing it from the world.

She’d gained three levels from all that, and yikes did vampires ever get a raw deal on the leveling front.

Made me wonder why we didn’t deal with more threats that way, but a mental review of them gave strong reasons why we couldn’t do that for most of them.

“How do you classify a fish?” I asked her, curious. “What makes a fish a fish and not, say, an eel? Where’s the line?”

The woman slowly blinked at me as Queen protested Tyrannus’s description.

“The sharovipteryx is a noble creature! A complete marvel! It can both run on four legs and fly, there’s nothing better as a kingdom icon!”

He snorted and Legion helpfully provided an illusion of what one looked like.

It was like a medium-sized salamander, except the hind legs were super wonky. Each hind leg was almost as long as the salamander was, with webbing between the leg and the tail. A worse combination of ugly and impractical I couldn’t imagine - although I supposed they could glide, possibly even fly with the right skills. I imagined they were only still alive thanks to the divine decree against bumping off species. 

Let’s see, big book of social rules… can’t quite keep my mouth shut, we were all friends or coworkers, find some middle ground where everyone can be happy, be diplomatic…

“They don’t look particularly tasty.” I said. “So it’s no real loss to skip on them?”

Queen gasped in faux-horror while Calm started to laugh his ass off. The rest of the War Sentinels currently on duty slowly filtered in while we discussed the merits of various animals and how tasty they were, along with liberal praise for the staff and [Chefs] of the Celestial Supper.

It was good stuff!

“Since we’ll never get there if I don’t start it. To business! Next ten minutes are reserved for nothing except shop talk.” Tyrannus said.

It was a clever move that had taken me years - and Iona explicitly pointing it out - for me to notice. The ten minutes thing was a deception. Once a bunch of passionate people all started talking about their thing, there was no way we’d shut up until our time at the Celestial Supper was over. 

“I’ve got an issue that’s been brewing for a while, and was hoping to get everyone’s advice on.” I said.

“Sure Dawn, what’s going on?” Tyrannus pounced on my question like a tyrannosaurus rex spotting a pig.

“My Legion’s basically stalled out fighting each other when I’m around.” I said. “They’re honestly getting more experience drilling when I’m not around than live fighting when I am. Pretty sure I’m making it too safe for them, and I’m torn on what to do. I’m going to bring it to the Legata, but I wanted to check in with everyone here first.”

Flood nodded approvingly at the last line. It wasn’t quite the first rule, but one of the most important rules of issues when being a War Sentinel - Did I talk with the Legate or Legata? The person in charge of running the Legion? Most issues could be fixed with clear communication.

“I think you need to step back a minute from levels, and look at real, tangible experience gained.” Flood ground out. “Barring that little jaunt in the Han a few years back, we’ve had a lack of opportunities and fights to hone our edge. The Core Sentinels are busier and I’ve heard the Shadows are stretched thin, but we’re War. Drills only do so much. Since you’ve brought it up, I’ve been meaning to ask. Mind if I ask Legata Katerina for a full Legion-on-Legion spar, with you overseeing it?”

I shot Flood an unimpressed look and folded my arms.

“You know my answer to that. Yes I mind, but if it’s arranged, I’ll be there anyway.”

“Your [Oath] is weird.” Depths said. Legion and Tyranus both snorted into their cups - I was a bit of an airhead at times and a little out-there, but Depths was waaaaaaaay out there. People in glass houses and all that…

“Today’s clearly Dawn day! An idea I’ve toyed with now and then. Calamity’s always working on new brews, so to speak, and I’ve been wondering. Field testing them is, hmmm, awkward, let’s say, and I was thinking. What if we picked out a nice city in Osmonpodenia or something, they’re all a bunch of miserable snakes, and Calamity let rip there. At the same time, you heal them. Both of you are doing it live, and - alright, alright, I get the idea.” Tyrannus said.

I’d been glaring open murder in Tyrannus’s direction ever since I realized his idea was ‘let’s commit mass murder on the down-low for levels!’

“Command would murder us. Arachne would string us up. Night would murder us. The diplomats would murder us. The Senate, half the Sentinels, any Immortals hiding there…”

I kept going, ticking each group off my fingers, finishing naming various groups when I ran out of fingers. And toes, after placing my feet on the table.

A bunch of coins traded hands, along with a few grins.

“Hey!” I protested, looking around. “You were all just winding me up!”

“I mean, we did wind up Legion last week.” Tyrannus smugly reminded me, only for an untouched turkey leg to suddenly reposition itself from his plate to mine. I grabbed it, extended [Etheric Aegis] to protect it against shenanigans, and debated how to best clean all the blood off it. Good for vampires, way too strong a taste for me. Also, goblin was one hell of a choice. I had regrets.

Which… fuck, might’ve been in Tyrannus’s plan the entire time. Dude was canny, but rarely showed it, unlike Flood.

“That was different!” I protested. “He brought it on himself! It was actually funny!”

Legion groaned and threw himself back in his chair. Carefully - he could go through the chair and half the walls in this place like tissue paper if he wanted to.

“That’s completely different! Idiot elven ‘hunting parties’ deserve what they get!”

What scared me about the whole thing - I suspected if I said ‘yes’, we’d be making plans right now. I was no naive idiot - I knew what my coworker’s jobs and business were, and sometimes I felt out of place, being the one advocating for peace and not doing harm. It was an odd place for it, but someone had to do it.

At others, I felt completely at home and in harmony with them. Broadly, we all wanted the same thing, we just saw many different ways of getting there. I could hold my nose up in the air and refuse to work with them at all, or I could do the most good possible in the position I held, and do my best to temper them. 

“Any new ones?” Flood growled out. I’d swear her throat was damaged if I hadn’t subtly tried healing it a few thousand times by now. I added one to my mental count as I briefly poked [Universal Cure]. 

Legion flicked a finger, and a detailed map of Exterreri overlayed our table. A few new red dots pulsed.

“Here, here, here, and here.” He said.

I frowned and leaned forward. Flood beat me to asking the question.

“In the last week!?”

==========================

The weekly War Sentinel meeting was always a nice time, and I took the chance while I was in Sanguino to swing by [Quartermaster] Harper’s office, grabbing several rolls of paper from [Repository of the Archmage].

“Daaaaaaaaawn! Oh my gosh, hi! It’s been, like, FOREVER since you’ve last been here! How’s my favorite girl doing? You look TOTALLY amazing, as always! You have style! I am so jealous, and we have so much to catch up on! I’ve missed you like crazy!”

I grinned at the bubbly [Quartermaster].

“Heya Harper! Sorry I haven’t been around as much, but I think I’ve got something super interesting for you.”

“OOOOOooooh, Dawn, you always bring me the best stuff. Hit me with it girl! I am totally ready for this!”

It turned out - going to the moon was fucking difficult. Magic made it possible for us to even consider it, but the sheer calculations and logistics were… yeah. We’d been spending years working everything out, and I was pretty sure we were still missing stuff. We’d spent four years planning and calculating before showing our work to Arachne, who’d loved the idea and was intrigued. She’d then poked more holes in our plan than a spiderweb, and mentioned Night had known a few people who’d taken the trip before us. We hadn’t quite needed to go back to the drawing board, but more calculation and planning was needed.

When I’d asked Night about it, he’d simply smiled and said he looked forward to what my solution was. Ughhhhhhh I understood why he did it, but it didn’t make it any less infuriating. 

Naturally, there was my work as a Sentinel, and eight years of vacation had gone by too quickly. I was back on duty before we’d even finished calculating the raw estimated trajectories needed, and I couldn’t leave for two months on a trip. Hopefully in the sixteen years I was ‘on duty’ we’d figure it out, and be able to launch shortly after.

I unrolled the plans we’d made on the desk, Harper’s endlessly bubbly personality sliding away to a serious face.

“What is…” She muttered to herself, eyebrows scrunching up as she flipped the pages over. “Glass? Ah, alchemically treated… it’s a single object. How… oh, I see. But why…?”

Harper looked up with a confused look on her face.

“What is this supposed to be?” She asked. 

“We’re going to the moon!” I explained, delighting in her fishbowl expression. It slowly morphed into one of delight.

“The moons!?” She jumped up, clapping her hands. “Oh Dawn darling, you really do bring me the most wonderful things!”

“Moon. Singular.” I gently corrected. “We thought it’d be too difficult to visit both of them.”

Harper went back to the designs with feverous abandon, flipping through them all again.

“Okay girl, I’ve got you! Got, like, a million questions though. Why glass?” She asked.

“So we can see what we’re doing and where we’re going.” I answered. Harper tapped the plans.

“Yeah, but you’re pulling out all the stops to harden it. Instead of trying to harden glass, I know an [Alchemist] whose made a potion to make steel clear. Much easier to work than pure glass, plus we can’t source that here. It would have to, like, be a super-special commission from Tympestshard. There’s one [Glassblower] I know of that could do it and not, like, accidentally kill you all halfway through.”

Harper dramatically shuddered.

“The size of this thing, combined with overland transportation costs… whoof, I don’t want to think about it. Doing it in steel though? You’re sooooooo much more flexible, you don’t need to cast it all at once. Where’s a quill? Ah, okay, so like, see…”

Harper bent over the diagrams, starting to cross out alchemical processes and substitute in new ones, tiny drops of ink splattering as she cross-checked numbers and rewrote half the process from the ground up.

Given how long it’d taken us to come up with the design and iterate over it, I felt vaguely offended. But I wasn’t a material sciences and armaments girl - Harper was. This would be like someone without the needed classes, skills, or education bringing me a set of biomancy plans. I was no genius, but I could probably improve it quite a bit on the spot.

“This here’s for an armor skill, yeah? Yeah, can’t imagine any other reason…” She muttered as she tapped the ‘half-chair’ part of the design.

In order to best keep our spaceship intact, we wanted it to be classified as armor. The best way we knew of to make the System recognize it as armor was to have a ‘control seat’ that was basically half a suit of armor for Iona to sit in, where she could then have the whole thing as ‘armor’. Since it was a single piece, the protection would then extend to the ‘hamster ball’ all around us.

Harper threw down her quill.

“Argh! Okay, this is hard, and it’s good. Solid. Yeah. Dawn, do you mind if I consult with some of the dwarven clans on this project? They like their fancy toys, and I think they could give me a hand.”

Hmmm.

“On one hand, it’s not exactly a state secret, on the other, it’s kinda… our project? We don’t want a bunch of other people coming in and telling us what to do, and how to do it.”

Harper nodded and flipped to the page where we’d listed out all of our gems we wanted. Most of them had a cheery little checkmark next to them, indicating we’d gotten them, and Amber was on the lookout for more. 

“I totally get you! This is your baby, not some greybearded dwarf who hasn’t seen the light of day this century! They wouldn’t know what to DO with something so cool, and no worries on them copying your designs! I can see that it’s tailored for both of your skills combined to make it work. Now! Like, the awkward part. The cost. I knoooow you know it’ll be expensive, buuut this is super speciality work. Molten steel and gemstone? NOT a good look. You ready for this?”

I nodded.

“You’re not sitting down, I don’t know if you’re ready… well, here goes.”

Harper named a seven-figure price. I sat down.

“That much!?” I squeaked out. I’d known it was going to be expensive, I’d just… expected one zero less. And it was a high seven figure price. I’d thought the gems were going to be the most expensive part of this, but that was clearly horribly naive. 

She tapped the sheet.

“Sorry girl! The raw material costs alone, before the gems? Eeeeesh. Then as I said, we’re going to need a major artisan’s workshop. Now… there’s a few things I can think of to help out.”

I wasn’t interested in cutting corners, but Harper knew better than to cut corners. Cut corners in gear killed Sentinels and Rangers.

“What’s the idea?” I asked.

“Well! This is going to be like, totally flashy, yeah? It could be a Big Deal. Poke the stuffy vampires in the Senate, maybe even the [Empress] could be interested, and boom! You bring an extra standard on the trip, they finance a third of it, everyone wins, yeah?”

I frowned. I’d need to talk with Iona. She’d discussed consecrating the trip to Selene and Lunaris, and when I’d bugged Ciriel about it, the Goddess of Healing wanted nothing to do with it.

It’s not that I’m uninterested She’d said. It’s that the Moon Goddesses are already involved, and this is their domain. They’d get pissed if I infringed on this rare opportunity. If it was Edor, the watery old fool, I’d say yes in a moment, there’s no contest. This is their domain, their bragging opportunity, their chance to gain big. The moment they need to split it even a little, they lose a lot of the power of the trip. Nah, I’ll sit this one out, and probably get a little token of thanks from them for staying out of their way. I win anyway!

“I have to check with Iona, but assuming she’s alright with it, sure!” I said.

Harper jumped up, clapped her hands and squeeeed, then wrapped me in a tight hug.

“Oh my gods! Thank you SO MUCH Elaine! This is going to be THE BEST PROJECT EVER!!!”

==========================

Home was my next destination, and I managed to break out from the permanent Ashen cover over Sanguino before sunset, letting me enjoy some of the dusk. Skye was waiting for me in the front hall when I arrived.

“Trouble?” I asked our [Chief of Staff]. Honestly, everything ran so much smoother with her around, it was great! Didn’t have to worry about most of life’s woes and problems with her fixing everything ahead of time.

She even got one up on the [Tax Collector!]

Skye shook her head.

“A child came by looking for you by name. I’ve seated him in the blue room with some snacks while we waited.”

I frowned and paid a hair more attention to my senses, getting an idea of what I was working with.

“Any ideas?” I asked. 

“He said he wanted advice. If he’d been looking for healing, I would’ve directed him to the Guild, but advice was novel enough that I thought you might want to take a look.”

I nodded.

“Thank you, Skye. I’ll take it from here.”

I flickered over to the blue room, teleporting in right in front of a lanky and awkward teenager. He jumped satisfyingly at my entrance, half-choking on some of Auri’s excellent cookies. I carefully and gingerly - didn’t want to break his spine or paste him across the room - patted his back, helping him out.

“S-Sentinel Dawn! Sir! Uh, ma’am!”

He scrambled up, throwing a piss-poor salute in my direction. I suppose he was pretty young.

“Hi! That’s me! Skye said you knew me, and were looking for advice?”

He suddenly started sweating.

“Well, err, kinda? Maybe? Not really? I don’t think you remember me, but I remember you. You helped out the Maple Orphanage six years ago? I was one of the orphans then. Name’s Nix. Pluvius Nix.”

I squinted. His age - early teens, but puberty had clearly started to hit him - looked vaguely right to be one of those tiny orphans who’d run around helping me resort my [Tower] back in the day. After six years, even with a perfect memory, it was hard, given how much people changed. 

Hells, it was half his lifetime, wasn’t it? That was a hecking long time to remember me.

“Advice! Sure, what can I do for you?” I asked.

“Well… I’m thinking of joining the Legions. Becoming a soldier, then maybe a Ranger one day. Like you?” He asked.

Hmmm.

I didn’t want to recommend anyone join the Legions, but then again, I wasn’t exactly in a position to talk. I’d done exactly that, at almost exactly the same age. Nix was an orphan, so it wasn’t like he had a ton of choices in life, and basically no social safety net. At the same time, I knew the money I’d given was enough for an apprenticeship anywhere, so he did have more options than usual.

“Is there a reason working as an [Apprentice] won’t work?” I asked. On one hand, if the money had vanished or been embezzled, I’d be pissed. On the other, I had Fenrir and Skye to sic on the problem.

“I… don’t really see myself going that way.” He said.

Ugh. Idiot teenagers and the propaganda machine. 

“My advice, in the strongest possible words, is don’t join. If you have to join the Legions though, I’m attached to the Sixth, and I’ll do my level best to keep you alive.”

Fuck.

That spark that lit up in his eyes?

The entire first half, the important part of my advice had just gone out the window, and I was sure I was going to see a familiar new recruit in a couple of years, when he’d finished his training period.

Damnit, I hope I hadn’t killed him.

[Name: Elaine]

[Race: Chimera (Elvenoid)]

[Age: 44]

[Mana: 7,695,490/7,695,490]

[Mana Regeneration: 16,393,330 +(50,591,044)]

Stats

    [Free Stats: 0]

    [Strength: 49,689 (Effectively: 397,512)]

    [Dexterity: 74,104 (Effectively: 789,059)]

    [Vitality: 237,472 (Effectively: 3,710,500)]

    [Speed: 224,704 (Effectively: 4,422,849)]

    [Mana: 769,549]

    [Mana Regeneration: 1,833,424 (+ 5,059,104)]

    [Magic Power: 1,007,359 (+ 45,381,523)]

    [Magic Control: 1,006,513 (+ 45,343,411)]

[Class 1: [The Arbiter of Life and Death - Celestial: Lv 901]]

    [Celestial Mastery: 901]

    [Aurora Curialis: 901]

    [The Stars Never Fade: 102]

    [Luminary Mind: 722]

    [Universal Cure: 901]

    [Etheric Aegis: 388]

    [Event Horizon: 680]

    [Zenith Everlasting: 701]

[Class 2: [Seraph of the Dawn - Radiance: Lv 883]]

    [Radiance Mastery: 883]

    [A Light Shining in the Darkness: 350]

    [The Rays of the First Dawn: 883]

    [Radiant Angel's Spear of Obliteration: 311]

    [Celestial Dew: 883]

    [Sunrise Halo: 883]

    [Wings of the Seraphim: 883]

    [Six Wings, Six Million Feathers: 883]

[Class 3: [Erudite Archmage - Spatial: Lv 760]]

    [Spatial Authority: 540]

    [Cozy Reading: 760]

    [Teleportation: 310]

    [Repository of the Magus: 600]

    [Tower of Knowledge: 228]

    [Reality, Writ As You Will: 570]

    [Astral Archives: 397]

    [Endless Pursuit of Knowledge: 710]

General Skills

    [Long-Range Identify: 580]

    [Handy: 277]

    [Companion Bond between Elaine and Auri: 901]

    [The World Around Me: 343]

    [Oath of Elaine to Lyra: 901]

    [Sentinel's Superiority: 901]

    [Persistent Casting: 710]

    [Tender Gardening: 299]