World Seed: Game Start (36 page)

“
First,
enchanting! It is much like casting a spell with runes, except you
are embedding the spell in an object, rather than letting it go free.
Integrate the runes with an object’s aura, and it will change
accordingly.” After saying so, he held up the glass sphere,
which I had identified as the medium most suiting a wisdom
enchantment.

Nodding
my head, I took hold of it and began drawing runes with my finger,
much like I had seen Jacobs doing when he enchanted my bow. While
drawing the runes, I made sure to send a bit of mana to my fingertip
to manifest it, and then sent the rune into the sphere. In total, I
only drew two runes, ‘increase wisdom’. Then, I inserted
my Mana Sense into the item, and frowned as there failed to be any
visible effect.

Shaking
his head, the old man told me what I had done wrong. “No, no,
you aren’t using nearly enough mana. For even the most basic
enchantment, a hundred mana is required to make each rune permanent.”

I
sighed when I heard that, and tried again. No wonder Jacobs had to
tap into his mana gem in order to enchant my entire armor set. This
time, I repeated the process, but poured a hundred mana into each of
the runes. When I inspected the glass sphere again, I watched its
aura gradually change, the runes attaching themselves to the segments
I had identified as corresponding to wisdom and enhancing them.

“
Good,
good. Now, you’ll learn how to disenchant. In order to
disenchant, you must return an item to its original state. This is
most easily done with runic enchantments, as you merely need to peel
the runes off of the aura for it to return to normal.” After
the old man spoke, I nodded and inserted my Mana Sense into the
sphere again, this time grabbing the runes with my aura and gently
peeling them off. To my surprise, they did not resist much at all
before coming off of the item and fading away into nothingness, after
which the glass sphere’s aura returned to normal.

“
Good,
very good. With this, you know the techniques for starting on
enchanting. Now you’ll just need to expand on it yourself, and
either experiment, or find someone to teach you once you are ready
for the next step.”

I
was a bit depressed that I couldn’t enchant special abilities
right away, as I had considered disenchanting my dagger, and then
enchanting it to emit a wind blade when used. Still, I nodded my
thanks to him and left. Doing a quick bit of math in my head, I
calculated roughly how many runes I would need to learn before I knew
them all.

The
result made me shudder, because if 25,800 runes was only 0.026%, that
meant that there were nearly a hundred million runes in the entire
language. Though, from my first attempts at learning the language
with the computer, one of the runes I had learned meant ‘to
water the grass once a week’. So, likely it wasn’t just a
rune for every word in English, there might be a rune for every word
in every language. If that was the case, then the runic language
truly was a universal written language.

Once
again I headed back to the hotel room, and used the money I had
gotten from the old man to pay for a few more nights. There were a
couple of things I needed to experiment with regarding Technomancy
before I was ready to take up a job involving it. Specifically, how
to interact with technology, as so far I had only adapted myself to
it.

Inside
the hotel room, I attuned my magic to Technomancy and sent it into
the bedside lamp. On an almost instinctive level, I could feel the
functions of the lamp. That is, on and off. There was a tiny part of
the aura that seemed like the switch, and when I pushed it, the
neighboring parts of the aura lit up as energy coursed through it. At
the same time, the lamp turned on.

Again,
the flavor text of the window made me shake my head with a sigh.
Next, I did the same thing with the holographic TV on the wall. This
time, I found several sections that felt like switches, and chose to
activate the one that separated the ‘on’ parts of the
aura with the ‘off’ ones. As expected, that caused the
rest of the aura to light up and the TV activated.

Then,
I tried to activate some of the other functions of the TV. Unlike the
lamp, I wasn’t sure what all the TV could do, aside from
turning it on and off, and obviously switching channels. After some
experimentation, I managed to finally find the part of the aura I had
to focus on in order to change the channel. This is way too much work
for this… I decided to go with a more direct approach, and
channeled my magic again. This time, rather than going through and
tampering with the aura, I simply imagined the TV turning off. When I
pushed the spell into the TV, it indeed turned off.

A
bit surprised how simple it was, I shook my head, depressed with how
I had tried so hard to get an effect I could have achieved with so
little effort. Next, I did the same thing, but this time sent the
command to turn on, and then instructed it to change channels. I
found that as long as my mana was connected to it, I could act as a
remote control, making it do anything that I knew it was capable of.
Of course, this did not mean I knew what a device did, just that I
could control it after I figured it out.

Well…
at least it’s not calling me a lazy bum.

Chapter 33: Lore?
Lore!

After
I was done with my simple test for controlling technology, I began
writing software again. This time it was a software for both myself
and Celeste. I recalled how Harlan and Rita talked about there being
the possibility to get an extension for the companion AI that would
allow it to display information in front of me eye, like a heads up
display. Since I already have a Cybernetic eye, and Celeste can tap
into my mana to ‘connect’ to me, why not make use of it?

My
first test was unsuccessful, because I did not take into
consideration that Celeste was unable to alter my mana flow, meaning
that she could not output energy in the same way that she takes it
in. However, there were other ways that she could output it, as
proven by the fact that she creates holograms. I simply had to create
a workaround that let her hologram function pass through my aura and
connect to my Cybernetic Eye. Meanwhile, I had to also create a
special access program for my eye that would allow the connection.

Rather
than copying technology, or controlling it, this was the method of
Technomancy where one interfaced with it. After I wrote the two
programs, I simply had to use a bit of my Technomancy to bridge the
connection, and a series of windows appeared before me.

I
smiled at the three advancement messages before testing out the
connection. “It working alright for you, Celeste?”

After
I asked, the room suddenly lit up in a brief yellow light, which was
only visible from my Cybernetic eye. Though, if I looked carefully,
it wasn’t the room that was lit up, but each individual object
was highlighted in a thin border of yellow light before moving on to
the next in rapid succession. Afterwards, a small white text
displayed itself at the bottom of my vision. Testing, testing?

“
A
bit too fast on the targeting system, but otherwise alright. Now,
next step, calculate trajectory.” I pointed my finger at a
nearby wall, and from my Cybernetic eye I could see a thin red beam
emitting from my finger, colliding against the wall. I moved my
finger around, and the beam followed it. “Good, that should
help a lot in the future. Now, bring up a 3D representation of the
wolf aura.”

Although
it was still only visible to my Cybernetic eye, a 3D model of an aura
appeared in front of me. “Switch the skin pattern for the snake
scales. After that, add on the lovebird wings.” As I spoke,
changes were made to the aura. “Good… Now, if I can get
a few more pieces, I should be able to make a small dragon. Well, the
body of one, at least.” I recorded the finished aura with my
eye, having it turn at various angles to get the full picture.

The
connection program with Celeste offered her a number of minor
abilities. The primary one was the ability to create holograms within
my Cybernetic eye by changing the information I received. This is
what let her do all of those previous acts. With her own processing
ability, she would be able to easily calculate wind resistance based
on the wind mana flow when I activate Aura Sight, so the targeting
system should be spot on.

The
second most important ability was how she was able to save the auras
directly to my memory, so that I could have preset forms to shift
into. Lastly, this let her display information obtained through her
software directly into my eye, as an extension of her holograms. This
would give me everything I needed to at least be competent with
whatever I needed to do.

Sadly,
this wasn’t enough to let her AI inhabit my head, but it was a
step in the right direction. I would still need to be wearing the
bracelet in order for the program to work. But with this, I should be
able to do my work as a mechanic much more easily.

It
was already late by the time I finished the programs, so I went ahead
and went to bed for the night. When I woke up in the morning, I did a
quick inspection of my grove, and was rather surprised with what I
saw. One of the birds, I’m not sure which, was sitting on the
ground next to the sapling of the heart’s apple tree, singing
to it. Since I was in tune with all of the magic in the grove, I was
able to feel a slight magical reaction from it. Likewise, the other
bird was perched on the enrichment fruit tree, seemingly resting.
However, I could feel the rush of wind mana entering and exiting her,
as if cycling.

They’ve
started learning magic? One in Nature Magic, and the other
cultivating Wind Affinity? Well, guess it was bound to happen sooner
or later. I sighed slightly, before exiting the grove. The next two
hours, I spent on starting to cultivate Lightning Affinity. Although
I had only managed to raise it to 1% through connecting to the
hotel’s power grid, that was still a good advancement, as long
as I kept it up.

When
I left the hotel today, I went towards the transit station, where
Celeste indicated I should be able to get a job as a mechanic. When I
arrived, I saw that it looked rather similar to a bus station, except
the busses were large spear-shaped vehicles that shot into the sky.
Celeste directed me towards the side, where a large muscular human
was standing around barking orders at people. When the human turned
around, I was shocked… Wait, that’s a woman?!