B2 - Chapter 35: Self-Powered Pokey Enhancement

Something about the exposed Singularity had sparked a need deep inside his chest. The memory of that moment back on Earth when he’d first anchored his teleportation Skill into the Singularity itself pulled at the back of his mind.

At the time, he’d felt that the only way he’d accomplished the feat had been with the power of the Singularity guiding his hand. But now, his aura yearned to be directed, pushed into an object just as he had done before.

As they ran, he began to wonder if he couldn’t find a way to anchor his teleportation into an object. And not just anchor it, but allow it to form portals in a way that would give the others escape routes and enhanced mobility in a fight.

[Terry]: Chippy, I want to keep experimenting. Can you help me with this project I had in mind?

[Chialpuncritis]: Of course, Terry. What two Skills should we merge?

[Terry]: Actually…before I came here, I managed to anchor one of my Skills into the Singularity itself. My portal Skill, in fact. I was wondering if we couldn’t do something similar with a mundane item. If we all had the ability to teleport…

[Chialpuncritis]: Oh, how delicious. But Py is an Artificer. We would be foolish not to seek her expertise.

Terry cursed himself immediately. Of course I should have asked Py!

[Terry]: Absolutely. Py? What do you think?

[Py Dar]: I would love to assist, Terry. Can you show me what you had in mind?

It was difficult explaining his ideas, showing the two of them examples, and running through the dark Underworld tunnels with no light but the fire in Juan’s hands.

But they made do.

[Py Dar]: What if we were to hold off on the teleportation tokens and instead focus on your new telekinesis Skill? If we pre-programmed the aura in a specific flight path, we could create reliable missiles. Even have them return to the user’s hand—or thereabouts.

He furrowed his brow at the suggestion, trying to envision what she meant. It didn’t make sense to imbue a rock with a return path and the overhead of having to anchor aura into a bunch of rock missiles sounded like a non-starter.

[Terry]: Can you give me an example?

She nodded agreement, moving toward one of the ghouls before suddenly faltering.

[Py Dar]: Uh, can you translate for me?

[Terry]: Of course.

The ghoul she had approached eyed her with a stoic expression, his spear tucked away in a roll along his back.

[Py Dar]: Can you ask if we can borrow its spear?

Terry nodded and shaped his aura in a friendly greeting. The ghoul returned the gesture and he got a series of images that formed the basis of its name, Weeping Rock.

“Nice to meet you. Can we use your weapon for a moment? We will return it unharmed.”

Weeping Rock didn’t hesitate, reaching back for his spear.

“You showed strength against the draugrs,” Weeping Rock said. “Perhaps enough to earn a name.”

That surprised him and he faltered as he reached for the offered spear. But before he could press the issue, Weeping Rock ran ahead toward the center of the group.

Terry returned to Py, who held Chippy in her arms, and swapped the little Savant for Weeping Rock’s spear.

As they ran, he felt Py’s aura begin to stir. He traced its path through the spear, entranced by the way it seemed to push past the natural aura of the shaft and blade, seeping into the structure with no resistance. He’d never witnessed an Artificer at work and he suddenly realized the incredible opportunity before him.

[Terry]: What’s your aura doing?

He could feel the structure it was creating, but had difficulty parsing the actual effect.

[Py Dar]: I have a Skill that can harden objects past their natural limit. I’m imbuing the spear with this enhancement.

Terry stared in fascination, belatedly realizing he could take an aura snapshot. He added it to his catalog, eager to study it further at a later time. For now, he needed to study the actual process of…imbuing, she had called it.

It only took a few minutes, but he knew immediately when the process was done—could feel it in the altered aura of the spear, a sense of solidity that was undeniable.

Py looked up toward him, the question in her eyes.

[Terry]: I think I understood the process…but that felt like a fairly simple enhancement. No offense!

Py snorted—a strangely human gesture on the four-armed alien—and held up two hands.

[Py Dar]: I am not offended, Terry. That was a simple enhancement. But now that it is sturdier, we may begin experimenting on controlling it through your new telekinesis ability without fear of damaging it.

Oh….that makes sense. He rubbed at the back of his neck, causing Chippy to chirp in alarm as he wobbled in Terry’s other arm. He quickly gripped the Savant with both hands, casting him an apologetic look.

[Terry]: Okay, so the spear is ready to take a beating. It sure would be nice to take a break to properly experiment.

[Py Dar]: All great inventions are the product of stress. Time or environment or situation, it matters not.

Her eyes twinkled with an excitement that infected him.

[Py Dar]: I know we will create something great here.

[Terry]: I appreciate the vote of confidence. Okay, let’s see what we can do.

With a flex of aura, he lifted the spear with his telekinesis, angling it so that it hovered at his side, parallel with the floor. It took practically no effort to keep it apace with him and he turned his attention to studying the shifting aura structure as it moved through the air.

Chippy’s aura reached out, highlighting sections that had also caught Terry’s eye.

[Chialpuncritis]: See the similarities in structure here…here and…here?

[Terry]: Yeah, I spotted that, too.

Chippy squeaked in his arms.

[Chialpuncritis]: Ah, you’re getting faster, Terry! You won’t need Chippy anymore!

He chuckled at that, shaking his head.

[Terry]: Please, oh aura master, educate this poor acolyte.

With Chippy’s help, they isolated the spatial mapping of the telekinesis skill’s aura framework. Rather than rely upon the Skill, Terry was able to reliably shift the aura to move the spear through the air—though with slightly less control than when he leaned upon the handicap of the Skill itself.

Before they could celebrate, the ghouls in front of them began to slow, the entire procession rippling as aura passed from the front of the group.

“What’s going on?” Juan asked, his eyes wide.

Terry hoped it wasn’t another possible fight—they were so close to leveling up the ghoul warriors with a powerful new weapon.

But as they slowed to a walk, he was able to see past the ghouls where the tunnel they had been running through opened up into a wide open space. The group slowly filtered out of the tunnel, finding themselves on a large flat perch overlooking a yawning chasm that stretched down and out of sight.

Across the chasm, flashes of movement in the dark caught his eye and he dialed up Master of Light to enhance his vision.

He gasped in shock, taking an involuntary step back into Py’s arms.

[Py Dar]: What is it, Terry?

Rather than answer, he scanned the crowd for Ben and Crimson Spear, his heart pounding with urgency. He found the two of them near the front of the pack, talking in ghoulish casually.

“The liminal layer should take another cycle to descend,” Crimsons Spear said. “The next level will—”

Terry approached in a rush, his aura reaching out to interrupt the conversation.

“Across the way,” he gasped. “There’s hundreds—maybe more. What do we—”

Ben put his hands on Terry’s shoulders, his eyes as placid as a frozen lake.

“We know. Take a breath,” he said in English. Switching back to ghoulish, he turned to Crimson Spear. “Should we let the draugrs handle it or…?”

The ghoul leader turned his gaze to Terry.

“The sunlight you summoned. How much deeper can we descend before you lose that connection?”

Thrown off by how casually they discussed the swarming sanguine across the chasm, it took him a moment to process the question.

“One moment, let me check.”

Reaching through space, he tested the distance, gauging it against his ability to project his aura. It wasn’t an exact science, but he had a rough estimate—and it didn’t fill him with confidence.

“I don’t know distance in ghoulish, but not much.” He turned to Ben. “Maybe another half mile?”

Ben translated the mile into a measure Crimson Spear could understand, then nodded toward Terry.

“That should get us past the liminal layer. From there, it’ll be a slog into the deeper layers.”

“We knew this,” Crimson Spear said confidently. His eyes cut toward Terry, a weight behind them that was unnerving. “Your portals. How precise are you in their placement?”

Terry waffled his head back and forth.

“Somewhere I’ve seen before? Very.” He bit his lip in thought. “But with no reference point, I have to go by feel…” He glanced toward Ben, feeling a responsibility to provide the solution weighing down on him. “I can open a portal to get a feel for the other side—even get a visual…”

Crimson Spear nodded, looking toward Ben silently. His uncle stared off in contemplation, leaving Terry wondering what exactly he had missed in the subtext.

After a moment, Ben turned back to the ghoul.

“It may be our best chance.”

He seemed to say it begrudgingly, which set off alarm bells in Terry’s head.

“What may be our best chance?” he asked.

A message came in, surprising him.

[Ben]: There are ears all around us and voices travel in these open spaces. I’ll fill you in as we run.

“A frontal assault,” Ben said, his voice filled with ice. “It’s the only way to break through the layers below.”

[Ben]: Crimson Spear and his people will continue their descent through sanguine territory, drawing their attention.

Terry opened his mouth in protest, but a subtle shake of Ben’s head silenced him.

“With your sunlight and the strength of the Bloodsplatter Clan, we will break through their defenses.” Ben’s eyes widened slightly, the unspoken statement evident in that gaze.

Still, he needed to hear it from the man—even if only in System chat.

[Terry]: And the rest of us?

[Ben]: You portal us past their defenses. We’ll infiltrate their inner sanctum where the Lakarot was once housed. Once it is restored, whatever happens next is irrelevant.

He stared at Ben, his mind slow to process that last statement. Once he did, he was ashamed at his immediate reaction.

But that’s not what the Quest says, he nearly said. The Quest is to return the Bloodsplatter Clan to their ancestral home…

Ben seemed to pick up on the conflicting thoughts in his mind, his lips setting in a way that Terry understood. There was a question in that look, a choice being presented that he felt ill-equipped to make.

His head felt heavy, his shoulders sagging as he considered what Ben was implying.

Even if we all died, even if the Bloodsplatter Clan was wiped out…it didn’t matter. We’d be dying to save the Underworld. We’d be restoring the lifeblood of this world, saving millions of ghouls and sanguine and other undead from the gradual demise they’d been slipping toward.

We’d be restoring the Blood of the Mother.

Is an entire world more important than my need to return to Earth?

He let out a deep breath, nodding once.

“I understand.” His eyes found Crimson Spear, his tone unwavering, brooking no argument. “But first, we’re gonna need to improve your weapons.”

***

While the ghouls arrayed on the rock platform overlooking the chasm, Terry, Chippy, and Py had continued their work inside the tunnel, free from prying eyes.

Weeping Rock’s spear was clutched tightly in his hands, aimed down the tunnel away from the others.

With a flex, he poured aura into the anchor point near the tip of the spear. He sensed the reserve filling and he increased the flow, pushing his aura in until he felt it reach its limit.

The slightest flick of his aura near what they had dubbed the release valve was all it took. The spear launched from his hand like he’d thrown it with all his D-ranked strength. It rocketed forward, clearing a hundred yards of tunnel in a blink before abruptly stopping. Before he knew it, it was flashing back toward him. He struggled to keep his hand exactly where he had released it, cringing as it whipped across his skin.

But when the dust settled, the spear was balanced across his open palm, only his chafed palm indicative of the sheer velocity with which the spear had returned to its starting point.

He found himself staring at the spear in disbelief, waiting for an irrational moment to see if it would suddenly go rogue and shoot off again or whip around into his face.

Behind him—and behind Al’Ruzan, who served as their body shield—Chippy and Py Dar cheered quietly. Py clapped her four hands in an unusual rhythm, while Chippy squeaked and chirped as he jumped up and down around the tunnel.

Terry finally realized that the experiment had worked—they’d created a flying spear with a return to sender mechanic. It was dangerous and the thrower needed to be meticulous in their positioning to not be smacked by the returning spear.

But it had worked!

Not only had it worked, but Chippy and Py had found that they could replicate the manufacturing of the enhancement themselves. With Chippy’s superior aura awareness and control, and Py’s ability to imbue enhancements into items, they were the perfect duo to mass produce a few dozen flying spears.

The only disappointment to Terry was that he hadn’t learned a new Skill with the discovery. He’d gotten used to the System rewarding him with dopamine hits whenever he discovered something new and he was feeling its lack now.

But he shoved that disappointment away easily enough—the ghoulish army now had a powerful new weapon in their fight against the sanguine.

[Chialpuncritis]: What should we name it, since the System hasn’t taken the honor? Chippy was thinking: Self-Powered Pokey Enhancement.

Terry turned and frowned down at Chippy.

[Terry]: Pokey…?

[Chialpuncritis]: That’s not what I typed! The System mistranslated!

Terry and Py shared a skeptical look—which Chippy couldn’t miss, despite his low vantage.

[Chialpuncritis]: Chippy swears! I meant it to say Pokey—you know, nevermind…

He chuckled, shaking his head.

[Terry]: Let’s focus. We need to imbue a hundred of these things and I still want to work on the token idea.

[Py Dar]: Agreed, Terry. The manufacturing of these enhancements might very well stretch our capabilities—especially with the time constraints.

He turned his attention to the piece of circular bone in his hand. When he’d asked Crimson Spear for something small, yet durable, he’d procured the coin-shaped bone, suggesting that there were many more where that came from.

Unlike the spear enhancement, his next idea was not offensive oriented but purely a life-saving measure. He understood from conversations with Ben that the ghouls didn’t expect to live through the next few days, but that wasn’t good enough for Terry.

He’d never forgive himself if he didn’t at least try to give them the best chance possible of surviving.

Now that he’d worked extensively on the imbuing process with Chippy and Py, he felt like his understanding had blossomed.

There were three components necessary for creating an Artifact—even one as bootleg and janky as what they were creating.

The first component was the space for an aura reservoir—a refillable battery basically. That was necessary to inject the power needed for whatever the enhancement was meant to accomplish. The power requirements were proportional to the difficulty of the task—though the physical size of the reserve bore no relation on the power output; rather, the maximum output was governed by the density of the user’s aura. Thankfully for the ghouls, their constant use of aura in day-to-day communications made their aura naturally dense.

The second component was the aura framework of the Skill itself. For the Self-Powered Pokey Enhancement, Terry had imbued his Telekinesis Skill into the spear. This was a relatively straightforward process that required him to take the ambient aura of the object and tie it off from the rest of the item. Then he could rework that small section into the appropriate configuration. At first, he had worried that changing the fundamental structure of the object’s aura would somehow damage the item. But Py had assured him that changing an item’s aura structure was a fundamental aspect of Artificing, and would not adversely impact the item itself unless the entire aura structure was unraveled.

The final component was both simple in concept but complex in practice. He needed to program the Skill in response to the influx of power. This was simple in concept because telling the spear to move forward one hundred feet at max velocity should have been as simple as putting in coordinates.

In practice, isolating the coordinate components of the Skill and then programming the action into the set of instructions based on relative position was quite the challenge.

It was only with Chippy’s expertise were they able to pinpoint the necessary changes they needed to make to incorporate the instructions.

What Terry had in mind for the bone charm was also both incredibly simple in concept, yet complex in practice.

But if he did it right, then the Bloodsplatter Clan had no need to martyr themselves to buy them time.

He only had a few minutes, but as he stared down at the bone and began to work its aura, he felt a certainty electrify his being.

This is gonna work. It has to.