The first thing I do is turn four of our five red crystals into mana batteries. The two rough gems will be paired together and installed into Daniel’s mana gauntlet to replace the three already in there, while the pair of dungeon crystals will be used for Corvax's new weapon. It takes me a few hours to finish them, during which Daniel turned Corvax’s massive pickaxe into a battleaxe with a spike on the back. We work together to combine them, and after another hour, both items are finished.
The mana capacity of Daniel’s gauntlet more than triples with the quality and quantity increase from the new crystals, allowing him to fight for longer than before even though we removed the three lesser batteries. The axe also comes out well. I use one of the basic enchantments from the primer Rayke gave me, one that releases a burst of raw mana along the edge of the blade. It’s the best I can do for now, as I don’t have the knowledge or skills yet to start tying in other people’s skills to enchantments. The primer only covers basic unattuned and spatial enchantments, limiting the items I can currently create. With both of those crystals, the axe should be able to hold five or six charges before it runs out of mana and needs to be recharged.
Once the axe is finished, I run my mana through it, examining it one last time before filling up the crystals a little bit and activating the enchantment. A burst of mana shoots out of the axe's edge, emptying the crystals and assuaging my fears of failure. Daniel and I take a moment to sit in the glory of our work, our first real enchanted item.
The handle of the axe is made of some sort of dense wood from Corvax's home planet and is about four feet in length. The head is a simple, large, one-sided axe with a beard that extends nearly a foot down and an eight-inch spike on the other side for piercing. Both gems are set into the axehead, on either side, almost looking like red eyes. After we are done admiring our work, we give it to its new owner.
Corvax looks truly terrifying with his new weapon in hand. He is easily strong enough to wield it with one hand, but it also has enough room for him to hold it with two or more hands, in case he needs more power. Daniel teaches him how to use the enchantment and push mana into the batteries, as Corvax has almost no experience in manipulating mana.
I start to work on my own item next, something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. I begin by engraving the crystal, using parts of my own skill, [Space Control], as the template and guide, like the enchanting primer taught me. Once Daniel teaches Corvax how to use his new weapon, he starts making the outer shell of my item for me, using the rest of the mana-conductive metal for the internals and regular steel for the outside. It takes me over three hours to finish the crystal, not because the work is mana intensive, which it is, but because I only have one shot at this unless I want to go do another trial room.
Once Daniel finishes the shell to my specifications, I lay out all the parts in front of me—the shell, the red crystal, which is the core, and the three old batteries from Daniel’s gauntlet—before I start assembling them.
First, I attach the core to the shell, using the connection points Daniel left for me with the mana conductive wire, making sure it is secure before I move on. Next, I wire in the batteries, ensuring all of them are functioning properly, even adding in redundancies so that just in case one or two of them fail, the rest will still power the item. And once I finish the assembly, I take a deep breath, examining it for any possible failure points before I turn it on.
Daniel and Corvax both watch intently from a few feet away, interested in the item I have spent the last six hours crafting while they fill their new batteries with mana. The completed item looks like a metal orb made of shiny stainless steel, about the size of a golf ball. After it passes all of my inspections, I feed mana into the batteries, activating the item for the first time.
I follow my mana as it fills up the batteries, and once it reaches enough capacity, it flows into the core crystal, turning on the enchantment. A small, empty cube of space inside the orb, just a centimeter to each side, immediately gets expanded into a cube almost two feet to each side. A few seconds after the spatial expansion, the core stabilizes the space, lowering the mana drain significantly from its initial activation.
A huge smile is permanently stuck on my face as I inspect my new item with all of my senses, telling me just how well or poorly I did. The first thing that is immediately obvious to me is that I can easily tell it is a spatial storage item with my spatial perception. It feels like the space inside is ‘overlapping’ with normal space while also still being contained in the orb. The bag of holding Elsine had must have had some kind of shielding or something on it to prevent anyone from looking inside. But the drain on the batteries seems manageable. As long as it stays at this rate, I only have to recharge it once a day or so until I can upgrade it.
“Well, what does it do?” Daniel asks, impatient at my lack of explanation so far.
“It’s like a bag of holding. That little cube I had you hollow out inside is almost two feet now, which should let me replace my backpack.” I respond proudly, holding up what I am now calling my ‘Storage Core.’
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“What is a bag of holding?” Corvax asks, confused at my explanation.
“It’s like, uh, a bag that’s bigger on the inside than the outside, allowing you to carry a lot of stuff without actually having to carry it. Here, watch this.” I say as I take off my backpack and remove everything from inside.
One by one I use [Space Control] to teleport my belongings into the orb, finishing by folding up the backpack and storing that as well. I was able to ‘isolate’ the storage space to a small degree as well, not enough to stop time inside or completely eliminate the weight of stored items, but they do weigh a bit less, and I can shake the orb as much as I want without affecting what’s inside.
“So all of that is now inside that little ball?” Corvax asks, eyes wide with curiosity and amazement.
“It is, and there’s even some more room inside. Once we get some better materials, I’ll be able to upgrade it to have a bigger storage space, and I’ll even be able to keep items in stasis so they don’t deteriorate or age while inside.”
“Can I see it?” Daniel asks, so I toss him the Storage Core. He spends a few moments examining it, turning it over and even shaking it a few times before he tosses it back. “Pretty sweet, but I thought you were making some kind of mana bomb or something to kill the boss with. And how does anyone else use it? I couldn't figure out how to take items out.”
“Yeah, um, you need to be a space mage to use it. I’m working with what little information and materials I have. I need to get my hands on and examine a real bag of holding to see how a professional makes them. I made this one with hopes, dreams, and a vague idea of how they work, so it’s a little rough.”
Daniel nods his head, giving me an amused smile. “Well, once you master the art, I want one too. Seems like it could be a useful tool once you iron out the kinks.”
“Well, if we’re done here, should we challenge the boss room?” Corvax says, a bit of excitement leaking into his voice. “I have been trapped in these tunnels for far too long, and the light of day is finally within reach.”
We decide to rest for a few more hours despite Corvax’s obviously wanting to leave now. I need time to recover my mana, and their batteries can still hold more, so we eat the last of Daniel's food and drink the last of his water before we challenge the final room. Once we all feel back in fighting shape and my mana reserves are straining my body again, we stand up and gather around the boss room door.
Daniel reaches forward and unlocks the door, allowing my spatial senses to pass through and examine the room before the door fully opens. The other side is a room surrounded by the same smooth black walls as the combat room, but this one is a good bit larger. After all three of us enter and close the door, the walls turn back into a fog and start receding and dissipating.
Once the fog is gone, we are left in yet another dark, cold tunnel. This one is made of compacted dirt and rough stones, none of the brickwork that we have gotten used to in the labyrinth. The door behind us disappears, replaced with more dirt and stone. Seeing nothing but more tunnel ahead of us, I urge us to move forward, relaying anything I see to the other two.
A few minutes later I notice a branching tunnel, slightly smaller than the one we are in now, causing Corvax to have to hunch down a little bit to fit. He moves well, though, likely used to moving in cramped spaces from his time in the mines. He offered to walk in front of the two of us, saying it would be shameful if he let two weaker people protect him. Daniel and I have no problem with this, as both of us have ranged options, so we take up his flanks with me on the left and Daniel on the right.
At the end of the tunnel, which is less than two hundred feet long and bends near the end, creating an L shape, is a group of about a dozen ants digging into the wall, expanding the tunnel. They aren’t nearly as big as the ones I saw in the combat trial with the Wind Leopard, maybe one and a half feet long, and only a few inches off the ground.
“Ants at the end of the tunnel, around that corner. About a dozen of them, and they haven’t noticed us yet.” I tell the others as we come up on the bend.
“How big?” Corvax asks, apparently already familiar with what an ant is.
I hold up my hands to show their rough size. Corvax nods while Daniel scoffs, remarking, “We can just stomp them quickly and move on. No need to waste time.”
After agreeing on our ‘plan,’ we round the corner and start stomping. It isn’t until the first one dies that the others even react to our presence, turning away from the wall they are digging at to swarm around Corvax, the one who stepped on the ant. They all start biting at his feet and ankles with their mandibles, causing Daniel and me to step in, helping the giant clear out the frenzied ants.
[You have slain multiple enemies]
[Level 1 Worker Ant Drone]
[Level 1 Worker Ant Drone]
[Level 1 Worker Ant Drone]
All level one workers, even the ones Corvax and Daniel kill are only level one. I wonder if the whole colony is the boss, or if there is some queen that counts as the boss, and we have to kill her. None of us know much about ants, however, so we just decide to move on and figure it out later. After exiting the side tunnel, we keep following the main tunnel as it twists and turns, occasionally dropping or rising in elevation.
Walking down the tunnel for a few more minutes, my spatial senses come across several more side tunnels, most having worker ants at the end digging into the earth. We go into each and every one of these tunnels to kill the ants, mostly because we don’t want to get flanked later. Some of the ants start to get a little bigger as we move further into the tunnel, and their levels increase as well, but never past level three.
It takes us nearly an hour of worker ant extermination and tunnel exploration before my senses finally come across something interesting. In the main tunnel, heading towards us is a group of a half dozen ants, much larger than the workers. They are each the size of dogs, reaching up to about my knee in height and roughly three feet in length from the mandibles to the back of the abdomen. Their exoskeleton has armored plates protecting the joints and weak points, and the mandibles look much more powerful, like they could break bones.
“Got a group of ants approaching us, still a few hundred feet in front of us. Seven of them, much larger than the last ones. They look like they might be some kind of colony defense variant, or maybe warriors. They have some armor and stronger mandibles,” I tell the group, which causes us to stop moving forward and get ready for a real fight.
“I finally get to test my new weapon!” Corvax exclaims, giving the axe a few test swings to test its range and limits in the tunnel.
I turn to Daniel. “You ready? They’ll be here any second.”
“I can feel them with my [Stone Sense], all their little legs skittering down the tunnel towards us. I’m getting excited thinking about how many levels this whole colony will be worth.”
“Well, let’s kill some ants, then.” I say as the ants finally come into the range of our lights.