[MA] 206. One Could Hope (Patreon)

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[A/N: Chapters this week: 1/3

Late chapters: 3

Next release: Thursday ]

The meditation room was miles wide and made of dark wood. There was no light there, for Liya thrived in darkness. She sat at the very center.

She had meditated while focusing on the white wooden spear shaft in her hands for three days, and it was time to stop. It was only a C+ material. If she had missed something about it by then, focusing more on it wouldn't push her further. Yet, she was nothing if meticulous and reviewed everything in her head before moving on.

The shaft was made of Lussin World Tree wood. Said tree wasn't the A-tier World Tree, the humongous tree that held realms on its branches, the domain of one of the neutral S-ranks in the Alliance. It came from a sapling they had gifted someone who experimented on it until they managed to mix it with the B-tier lussin pine.

The result had been underwhelming at first. The Lussin World Tree was only C-tier, no matter how close to B it might be. The researcher believed he had lost a lot of money.

However, a friend of his found it was perfect for freeform crafting when used for C-tier spear shafts. It sang truer and more varied than any other type of wood due to the World Tree's nature while keeping a good baseline value for all spear shaft properties thanks to the lussin pine. It had the best grain alignment of any C-tier wood and above-average strength, flexibility, and thickness. It even grew in the right shape, requiring very little work to turn into shafts, thus minimizing the waste. Those baseline values could then be enchanted to accentuate whatever one wanted without negatively affecting the other characteristics. While it wouldn't become the best shaft in anything it was enchanted to do, it would still sit close to the top.

This specific shaft's grains were poorly aligned in three tiny spots. That meant the shaft would need a resistance enchantment or might break whenever it met a C+++ force or stronger. It was unlikely to ever do so because C+++ was rare, and only a dumb C-rank would swing a spear at a B-rank. However, Liya wouldn't create a subpar product, so she hoped to hear the spear ask for a resistance enchantment when the time came.

Its grip felt firm and comfortable, but the flexibility was stiffer than usual. It was still good enough. In fact, she had only crafted a thousand or so spears with fewer shaft imperfections, which was a feat considering how many she had made in her years.

Lastly, she couldn't notice a single bump in the perfectly rounded material; she had done a good job with it.

Done with that, she brought out a blue crystal spearhead from her Inventory. Before coming to Earth, she had already meditated on it but spent a few hours double-checking her findings.

The callsamir glass had no great origin story. It was just another material found in the shallow planes of phase space. Rare enough to be expensive but not useful enough to reach crazy prices.

Spearheads were seldom done with it because it required specialized tools and knowledge to bend it into shape, which Liya had gone to great lengths to obtain. She liked how it didn't reject or interfere with any wood or metal and was considered B-tier—albeit in the lower end—when it came to resistance. Extra-resistant spearheads were crucial for any spear that might not receive a self-repair enchantment, and she still didn't know if this spear would. The only occasion she didn't use callsamir glass in freeform crafting was to test new things.

Liya's final examination found no surprises in the spearhead, so she moved on.

She eliminated all air, mana, and qi from the room—it was a first for qi—and affixed the socketed spearhead on the screw-looking end of the shaft. It fit like a glove. Not even a hair could pass between the two parts, yet they pressured each other just the right amount. There would be no unexpected material tear from the stress, and the friction wouldn't allow them to unscrew on their own.

They weren't supposed to separate at all, though. Liya took her golden melding brush from her Inventory and delicately stroked it over the places where glass and wood touched each other.

Patience and attention to detail were paramount here.

Days later, wood and crystal seamlessly blended together. One would be hard-pressed to find a single picometer between the materials. Looking from the outside, the wood simply seemed to suddenly become crystal.

Most spearmakers would be satisfied with that much, but she was a master. She knew she wasn't perfect, so she used her domain to feel every slight bump in the connection, every imperfection, then Annihilated them. She also triple-checked the shaft and spearhead but found them as good as she had made them.

Now came the enchantments.

There was a lot of technique and science in determining which enchantments each material, shape, and mass could take. Objects made of different parts of different materials made things much more complicated.

Liya had already calculated it. She did it again now that she had Annihilated a couple milligrams, just to make sure. Everything was so complex that it took her a couple hours, despite her peak C-rank mind, to confirm that her analyses were sound.

By science and materials alone, the easiest enchantment to affix to that spear would be Levitation, and making the spearhead Sharp without affecting the wood should be impossible. The science behind enchantments deemed she had to enchant the spearhead separately and hope it didn't interfere with whatever enchantments she added to the shaft.

However, that was only true up to the mid-C-tier.

Science failed the closer things got to B-tier.

Alliance magi-science was advanced, but some secrets of Reality simply couldn't be measured or systemized without feeling them by yourself. B-tier meant using mastered Laws, which could only be understood by those who mastered them. Passing that knowledge to others was an exercise in futility.

Most crafts used science until they couldn't any more, like Liya had just done.

Then, it became an art form.

Liya could take two different paths now. One was to use her mastered Laws of Spear to feel which enchantments the weapon in her hands could take and decide on her own. She could even guess which they would be based on the crafting process until now.

The second was her goal all along; she was freeform crafting.

She stood up and swung the spear. She danced with it in different forms. She felt the wood and heard the spearhead sing.

She had become a spearmaker for practical purposes. As a Maiden, she needed a non-combative role for extra AP. As a spearwoman, crafting her own weapons would let her save SC, prevent her from owing favors, and assist her with avoiding risky challenges in the hopes of acquiring a good weapon. As part of drow society, she was required to have a secondary role on top of the warrior one everyone had. And as someone who had pulled a Concept from the Laws of the Spear into her Path, spearmaking let her more easily touch on the truths of the Spear and advance her comprehension.

Yet, practically soon turned into a passion.

Liya found herself in her craft.

She only ever felt free while crafting a spear. It was her single moment of absolute selfishness. She wasn't drow, Maiden, spearwoman, Path Walker, or part of a dog-eat-dog multiverse-spanning society. She wasn't even everything that being Liya implied.

She was just a woman making a spear, an artist in her natural habitat, a conduit of creation.

Listening to a spear's song and feeling connected to it as it was birthed into the world was a unique experience. Every spear sang, breathed, and existed differently. She paid attention to find out what it truly wanted.

It wasn't that the weapon in her hands was sentient, but it wasn't just dead matter either. It was a spear. It was intrinsically connected with the Laws of the Spear more than any other object, including the individual parts it was made of. Connected to Laws that had Wills of their own.

For now, the spear in her hands perfectly matched the Laws of the Spear, but Liya would soon find its individuality.

Reality was way more mystical than what she had explained to Feng Shen, though she hadn't lied to him. He simply lacked the means to understand the nuances. He hadn't even touched on a Law yet. Numerous truths were beyond him.

Each spear was both Spear and its own existence. There was an in-between that could only be felt, never measured or explained. The link between individuals and the Laws governing them was unique to each existence. When it came to spears, finding the link and comprehending it well separated Master Spearmakers from amateurs, wannabes, and impostors.

Some spears were brazen and outgoing in stating their individuality. Others were timid or even afraid. The one she was wielding was more in the former category. Only a few hours after she started, she knew what it was and wanted to become.

Fortunately, it did want to fix its weakness with a resistance enchantment; thus, she hadn't wasted her time. But before enchantments, she had to set its core Law.

Not all spears sought one, but this one did.

Liya drew from the Law of Piercing of the Laws of the Spear and weaved it around and inside the weapon while wielding it against invisible enemies. The process was as delicate as it was complex. She had to use the inlaying pattern unique to Piercing and match it against the wood and crystal and keep willing the Law and spear to become one. Every cubic inch had to be covered equally, or the imbalance would turn the core Law against the spear.

She kept wielding the weapon in a lethal dance that foretold how the Law of Piercing would be used in that weapon. That wasn't truly part of spearmaking, but she found it helped her focus.

Liya finished the process two days later. Such speed was undeniable proof of her qualifications.

Then, she took her silvery deep-inscribing pen from her Inventory and drew magic characters inside the crystal and the wood as if they were a single entity. Magi-science couldn't explain how the object didn't blow up. Only a crafter who had mastered a Law could, and only if they had extensive theoretical crafting knowledge and ample experience to draw from.

When Liya was done, she made the weapon float and appreciated the fruit of her labor.

The Piercing Law, at its core, was meant to break defenses by focusing all power in a single spot so the two offensive enchantments could do their jobs better.

Destruction, the first offensive enchantment, wanted to immediately obliterate everything in its wake. Rot, the second, sought to bring prolongated suffering to all who resisted.

It also had two defensive enchantments. Both Resistance and Elasticity would prevent it from breaking easily and thus assist the spear in achieving its goals.

Liya approved of it. It was fine-tuned tool of wanton doom that would leave tears of pain and despair in its wake. Yet it looked almost ceremonial with its pristine white wooden shaft and the blue crystal spearhead.

She decided it deserved a name. A simple one with multilayered meanings.

"White Devil," she declared while placing the tip of her finger on the edge and letting the weapon draw its very first blood.

The weapon shook slightly, and the system's auto-Inspect marked the end of the crafting process.

=

White Devil (C++)

Enchantments: Resistance (C++), Destruction (C++), Rot (C++), Elasticity (C++)

A spear created to bring pain.

=

Liya smiled. The system understood the mood sometimes. The White Devil liked to show its power through action, not fancy descriptions.

"May you fulfill your purpose one day," she said as she made it float away from the room and into her armory, where it would wait with a couple thousand other spears for the day they would be sold.

She was currently crafting for AP. Contrary to free market logic, the system gave more AP when buying bulk. As far as the drow had discovered, the main reason for that was to strengthen the much-needed crafting industry.

Stored objects could be stolen or lost. One had to have a way to protect their goods. Crafters usually weren't warriors, so they were often forced into seeking a support network. Ultimately, it strengthened business relationships between multiple parties in the crafting process. That, in turn, helped guarantee the system would never run out of goods to buy and then sell in its stores.

In other words, the Alliance war machine wouldn't lack supplies.

Liya took a deep breath. She felt emotionally and psychologically exhausted. As easy as the process might seem from the outside, it had taken a lot of her. She needed a break of a few weeks before finishing the next spear, or she might make a mistake.

She stepped outside her smithy and looked toward the stars through the dome of Darkness hiding and protecting her.

The drow no longer felt stronger in Shar'Talon now that the Bloody Mists were gone, but she still felt connected to the drops of blood essence she had left there to help strengthen her people, as all drow did. Shar'Talon might already be gone; her blood might just be floating in empty space somewhere in a different universe.

But she still held to hope.

There was no space between universes, only a spatial membrane. Some universes were more extensive than others, but there was always an origin point that anyone who mastered a Law could feel. All universes also expanded in one direction first from that origin, and the Alliance dictated it should be considered zero-zero-zero in their maps. So, one could superimpose universes for reference.

Liya did so and looked longingly at the place her blood drop would be if it were in this universe.

She wished she could check it at once, but it would go against the Triarchy's desires.

Technically, she was no longer an Observer. The one-year observation period had ended. However, she was using a few loopholes to remain protected on Earth. Unfortunately, that meant refusing any external communication, be it direct or indirect. As far as she knew, she depended on the Alliance's protection to survive, so she wouldn't break the rules.

Even if the drow were still around, they had seen fit not to contact her through a messenger, so things were not going smoothly. At least that much she knew.

Liya took another deep breath and turned in China's direction. Her life would be much safer if she killed Feng Shen. Yet, that wasn't the drow way.

The drow respected a martyr's wishes if asked to run when that was the only way for some to survive an impossible situation. They accepted unfortunate deaths to perfect processes that benefited all. They saw nothing wrong in pushing someone beyond their breaking point in pursuit of excellence.

But they never directly sacrificed an unwilling or unsuspecting fellow drow who had done nothing to deserve it. Not for the good of Reality, not for the Alliance, not for their entire race.

The True Enemy had done that to them.

They would never do the same.

So, if it depended on her, Feng Shen would live, despite how dangerous it would be for her to leave with him due to her obligatory attendance at the Summit. It would mean forsaking her protection. It might be the end of the drow as a species.

Liya would do it anyway, for he was her charge and thus also drow.

Maybe even if her species was swept by the unforgiven rivers of time and forgotten one day, their ideals would live through the few living charges they had left behind.

Maybe one of them would destroy the Alliance.

One could hope.

Speaking of Feng Shen, she wondered how—

Liya felt him and what remained of his foe, stored her smithy away, and teleported to him.

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