Imperious, Chapter 020 - Back to School (Patreon)

It turned out she didn’t need to look far. The second room jutting off from the main workshop turned out to be a storage room. There wasn’t anything in there particularly valuable in the way of weapons or cool stuff that she expected to find in the vault. Instead, it was all learning materials set aside for the purposes of whomever found this place and decided to actually take on the test set by the quest. In fairness, calling it a storage room was giving it a bit too much credit. It was more like a slightly oversized walk-in closet with six standing shelves. Two on the left and right, one at the end, and one in the middle.

The first box contained exactly what she needed. The box itself was no larger than a shoebox and if she hadn’t known better she would have assumed that was exactly what it was, a shoebox. When she opened it she found it full of small metal plates stacked neatly together. She pulled one out and found that it was about the size of a playing card and made of something that looked a lot like iron or steel. It was ridiculously thin, only a bit thicker than a playing card. She used identify on it and was surprised at how straightforward the description was.

Engraver’s Easy Practice Plate (Common-Grade)
This small sheet of magically primed steel is intended to be used to practice the engraving skill. It is suitable for engraving a single rune with the ultimate goal of turning it into a single-use spell token. An engraver can gain experience through practicing with this plate and improve their skill up to Low rating with it.

She blinked, That’s way more information than I usually get from an item. Is it because I have the profession? She wondered at it but ultimately decided that it would be a waste of time thinking too hard about it. She put the lid back on and moved it to the side, she’d take it out with her after going through the rest in the storage room. There were five more boxes of easy practice plates that she found giving her plenty to work with. Making them was probably super inexpensive to just dump this many onto a single person. This was a solo dungeon after all. Or did it matter? Did the System make this place?

She shook her head and moved on to the next couple of boxes with different labels on them. There was a mid rating plate made out of what looked like some sort of gold alloy. Then there were the high rating plates, the existence of which confirmed the next stage beyond mid. They were made out of some kind of shiny black material that felt somewhere between stone and glass. Obsidian? Probably. The last set of boxes contained the peak rating plates. Each of them was made out of raw glass and felt incredibly delicate to the touch.

She turned one of the card sized wafers of glass over in her hand and felt like she could crack it just by applying a little pressure with her thumb. You can engrave on this? She thought, a bit daunted by the prospect. She carefully slid it back into the spot she’d taken it from and moved away from the shelves with practice plates, moving to the next set of shelves.

These were a bit more bare than the rows of boxes on the previous set. These boxes contained just as many plates as the previous shelves but there were fewer boxes. More notable was the fact that all of the plates were already engraved. She frowned at the unusual patterns on them and tried to use identify but got a jolt in response. Confused, she slid the card back in and only then noticed the label on the shelf. She made a deadpan expression and glanced at the other shelves, finding similar labels. This shelf said ‘Disenchantment Practice Materials’.

Okay so I’m supposed to disassemble these using my skill, she thought and moved on to the net shelf that had even more cards. These had clearer runes carved into them. She leaned back and read the label, ‘Analysis Practice Materials’. I’m starting to get the picture, she thought sarcastically and moved on to the next. This shelf contained boxes not filled with metal cards but instead boxes filled with small glass spheres about the size of large marbles. She picked one up and felt a faint warmth in them. The label for the shelf said that they were Core Refining practice materials. 

It took her a second to realize what it was implying, So wait, are golem cores made out of monster cores? She pursed her lips, I guess that makes sense. Kinda creepy though. Could I use one of those cores I got off the boars to create a golem?

The next shelf had more of the same sized spheres but these were more opaque. “Core Engraving practice materials,” She nodded and moved on to the last shelf which was the oddest of the bunch. It was just filled with blocks of various kinds of stone. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what they were for before she noted the label on the shelf, “Modeling practice, I get to carve my own little golems,” She said with amusement, noting that the blocks were barely a foot tall.

She stepped away from the supplies and smiled, “Feels like I have my own back to school section, I have everything I need,” She said and turned back to the door only to spot one more thing in the room. An engraving on the wall to the right of the door. Not runes but words that shifted right before her eyes to become english.

To you who would inherit my legacy,

Thank you for accepting my challenge, I apologize for the rough treatment my guardian must have given you and I am glad you survived. I hope by exploring the mines that funded my research and seeing the work of my golems that they are more than just machines of war or ugly things. They can serve a productive purpose and they can be beautiful. It was my dream to construct a golem that was more than just a machine, one that could be a friend. It was arrogant to want to simulate life, but I am an arrogant man.

In my obsession I let time escape me and my path of growth faltered. I never grew powerful enough to increase my lifespan and now I am old. I have spent what may very well be my last year of life creating this dungeon to give to a new world in the hopes I may find a successor. I hope these materials will assist you in building a foundation that will allow you to surpass me. Good luck, young Engraver. May you find your own enlightenment and lofty goal in this place.

Ibbek Calesyne, Golem Master for the Starlight Sovereign of Idle

Anna ran her fingers over the words, “I think we would have gotten along,” She said a bit sadly, tilting her head, “Building a friend, huh?” She laughed and shook her head, her shoulders slumping a little as she thought back to high school. “Yeah that would have been nice, I get it.”

She rapped her knuckles on the words, “Thanks,” She said and slipped out of the room, rubbing her neck and glancing at her resources. Her mana still wasn’t down to zero but it was going down much faster than before. She rubbed her aching fingers, the rest of her body was feeling better with every hour. Brief breaks to chew a healing root did wonders. She put her hands on her hips and glanced towards the vault and the last door she hadn’t explored. She shrugged and walked towards the final door, Might as well. I could use a little break from reading anyway.

When the door opened the sight that caught her eyes drove her to her knees, she wanted to weep and she wondered what gods the clerics prayed to so she might thank one of them. 

“A fucking bathroom and shower,” She nearly sobbed, “What a relief.”

She raced over to the tiled space with a clear showerhead over it and looked for the controls. Unlike the refrigerator and stove that had been locked by the old Golem Master and had no discernable way to use them, this thing had a simple knob on it. She turned towards the sink and toilet next and was relieved to see they both worked as well. Finally there was an odd looking basket in the corner to the immediate right of the door coming in that she hadn’t noticed. When she opened it she saw one of the longest string of runes she’d ever seen inside. She only recognized two of the runes but that was enough to tell her what it was for.

“Water and Purify.” She grinned, “It’s a washing machine!” She laughed out loud.

An hour later, blessedly clean and wearing clean robes that had even been somehow repaired by the beautiful amazing machine, she practically raced towards the bookshelves and began grabbing all she could. She was finally starting to feel full of energy again even if her eyes felt heavy as ever and she wasn’t going to waste a single moment inside this place. The old man that had built it had clearly been a thoughtful person and had made sure he would pass on every bit of his legacy. She was not going to let him down.

–

It was a full day later when her mana finally reached zero and she felt comfortable enough to begin practicing with plates. According to everything she read, getting used to engraving on thin and fragile materials was a must. She understood how an engraving circuit was supposed to work, minimal lines that were wide enough to allow mana flow but small enough to maximize space. The notes she’d taken had given her some ideas for what runes would be best to practice with, the most notable being what was called the lock rune. The lock rune had a lot of functions depending on where it was in a spell, but on its own it had two functions depending on which way mana was run into it as an engraving. Unlock and Lock.

She thought of the amenities in her room which she’d recently cleaned out thanks to the newly discovered bathing area and the gun cabinet across the street from her house. Not to mention all manner of locked things she might come across while exploring. It was a simple rune and wouldn’t work on strong magical locks, but she imagined the old Golem Master hadn’t used something crazy on the stove and fridge.

The only problem was that, staring out, she was really bad at this. The moment she picked up one of the thin sheets of steel and used the skill, she felt as if a portion of her awareness was inside the metal. It was strange, like she had a tiny finger full of sensation that was just beneath the surface of the steel. As soon as she applied the smallest amount of concentration the finger pressed down and she quite literally carved into the material. She’d been so surprised at the feeling that she’d sliced the damn thing in half. 

That happened about a dozen more times and at one point she frustratedly threw the ripped metal to the ground. She stomped back to her books to read some more to get away from the awful things only to march right back in a petulant unwillingness to be beaten by sheet metal. Fuckin thing! She grunted as she pulled another one out and took a deep breath, fixing her eyes on the card and pressing her lips together in a thin line as she tried again to draw a simple line only to shred this one into four even sections. She groaned and threw her head back, “The fuck am I doing wrong?” She complained, getting up and going to her books again.

“Gotta be something here,” She muttered, flipping through what she had started calling ‘An Idiots Guide to Engraving’ and finding herself back at the section where she’d discovered the existence of the plates to begin with. The paragraph about the plates was just as uninformative as the last few times she read it. She sighed and scratched her head, messy black hair falling around her face as she poured over the rest of the chapter. When she got to the end she spotted a small note in the margins.

Early stages of practice can be difficult without a formal teacher, there is a section that may be useful in ‘An Educators Approach to Engraving’ third stack, bottom shelf.

She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose before hustling over to the bookshelf again. She’d skipped over the book since she had rightly assumed that she was in no place to be teaching anyone about engraving but now she understood what the purpose of the book was. She pulled it out and made her way back to the desk and began reading. A lot of it was teaching theory but eventually she got to a spot that made her eyes bulge.

“New Engravers may struggle with getting used to the practice of engraving materials, leading to the destruction of numerous practice plates. While low-tier practice plates are inexpensive, it can prove troublesome to make more and more for a woefully inexperienced student,” Ouch, rude, she thought and continued.

“Using magnifying lenses or focusing spectacles can assist such a student in getting used to the feeling of the skill, Towermaster Argent suggested once that a workstation fitted with stationary multi-strength lenses is best for gradually working towards free engraving,” She read aloud and shut the book with a groan, turning around to look at one of the workstations with a bunch of lenses hanging from a metal arm attached to the side.

Her lip twitched, “Right. Gotcha.”

A few minutes later she was sitting at the new workstation with a box of steel plates and all of the lenses turned inward so that she could peer through them all at the same time giving her a very intimate view of the surface of the metal. She touched it with her hand and used the skill and felt her focus slide into it again. This time, though, with her eyes focused on a single point on the surface with as much detail as possible, her mind was able to relax a little more as she let out a steady breath and slowly moved the card across her line of sight rather than moving her point of focus herself. 

The result was a card with a neat, clean cross shaped engraving on the surface. More importantly, it didn’t fall apart.

She threw her hands up into the air, “Woop! That’s one!”