novelraw Chapter 200: Tier Eight, for realsies
Chapter 200: Tier Eight, for realsies
Standing up and dusting himself off, for real, Rory stretched his arms overhead.
"I've come a long way, haven't I?" Rory mused. His body felt good, which made sense; crossing the tier seven to tier eight divide was always going to be quite the boon.
"You know, I'm a bit curious."
Opening his interface, he thought briefly, and it began to shift as a display appeared.
Rory – Lord Founder of EhkorrusNo, nope, scratch that, I am NOT beginning to refer to myself that way.
Rory
Race: Proto-Human, C2
Level: 80
Vocation: Architect of the Precursors
Ascension Skills
- Maker's Arsenal (A2)
- Eye for Potential (A3)
- Blood Flame Forge [Essence Spark, Blood Affinity] (A4)
- Scholar's Retreat [Eyes of the Scholar] (A5)
- Mind Palace (A6*)
- Forge of the Cosmos (A6*)
- Seams Unseen (A7)
- Coordinates of Space-Time (A8)
"You know, I forgot how many of my offered skills ended up being different than what they said on the tin," Rory chuckled. Blood Flame Forge, his famously demonic-sounding skill choice… And it had merely been a vehicle for receiving the Essence Spark skill alongside a Blood affinity. Scholar's Retreat technically was a passive, with Eyes of the Scholar being the actual active skill.
Which had then gone into fusing with Eye for Potential, testament upgrades, yada, yada, Bob's Ya' Uncle, and boom, Eyes of the Architect was born.
Another point of reminiscence was his double skill offering as he moved from A5 to A6. He'd been forced to punch up in a way that had almost killed him, but a double skill offering was otherwise unheard of.
I wonder if I'll see that again, going from A10 to A11…. A long ass time from now.
Aside from his skills, glancing at his attribute history was another moment of crystallized history.
StrengthDurabilityFlexibilityCognitionPneumaGrowth1
------2DDFFFC3FFBDFC4DDDDEE5EDFDFC6DDDCFC7DDFDDC8DDDCDF"You know, if this were a report card, I'd be disappointed in myself," Rory chuckled. It was actually impressive how he'd managed to keep such a uniform level of attributes at nearly every point.
Just cost me a fuck ton of extra time and effort, thanks to Growth.
"Tier three, B grade flexibility. Wasn't that when that Triumph Fox had mauled my ass, and I was planning just not to get hit after that?"
Yeah, that sure lasted long.
It amused Rory that, after having just suffered the effect of Cognition Oversaturation, a look at his cognition investment wouldn't jump out to anyone as over the top if they weren't already aware that most people barely invested in cognition to begin with, just enough to keep their mental faculties up to speed with the monsters they faced.
Hmm, in hindsight, I wonder if other crafters will have this problem in the future? They're probably the only ones who are dumping a third or more of their attribute density into cognition routinely.
"Alright, noted to send a memo to Irene or Gil, though it's probably going to be a hundred years or more before any other crafter is cracking tier eight."
All in all, Rory was pleased with himself.
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I mean, I'm still up and kicking, and I've got a city of thousands, so I can't be doing that bad of a job, now can I?
Putting the mental patting-on-the-back aside, Rory turned to more important issues.
Namely, his 'upgraded' Eyes of the Architect, which had recently been integrated with Seams Unseen.
"No point in delaying."
Releasing the full extent of his Ocular Release, or nearly full release, Rory made a point of leaving the cognition boost inactive; he observed the change.
Of which, there was one very obvious change.
"Why can I see a… grid? Over everything," Rory muttered. It wasn't 'really' a grid; something in the back of his mind understood that, but it was how his mind chose to interpret the information he was being fed.
It didn't take a genius to figure it out, as Rory put two and two together a moment later.
Oh, this is Seams Unseen.
Seams Unseen was a skill that allowed him to perceive the 'seams' in reality, making critical points easier to find. Benefits ranged from knowing precisely where to hammer an ingot, all the way to splitting through the barely bolted-together spatial folds of a hostile Khan's territory.
Those benefits remained, but now Rory was becoming increasingly confident that what he was 'interpreting' as a grid was the literal 'points' in the fabric of space.
That's God damn weird; I won't lie.
Pulling an extremely sharp glass-like item from his inventory, a shard of the sky that he and Zoey had obtained back in the depths of their volcanic home, Rory focused his attention between two specific points.
This might be a bad idea.
Spoiler alert: It was.
Using the exceptionally sharp piece of 'glass', Rory grasped the fabric of space with his mind and slashed outward, like cutting through a piece of cloth with some scissors. The glass-like shard wasn't particularly needed for that purpose, but as sharp as it was, it lent 'weight' to the intent of 'cutting' through space.
And boy howdy, did he cut through space.
Instantly, Rory felt space warping inward, dragging anything not grounded toward it, a singularity that may as well have been a baby black hole.
Fuck, whoops, go back!
Twisting his hand, a sphere of red crystal appeared around the baby singularly, the constructed bound space appearing far easier than when he was tier seven.
Well, that's nice to know at least. Though I'm going to have to investigate why.
"Right, so, the Bane is a damn cheater, nice reminder," Rory mumbled as he examined the singularity that had been cut off from the rest of the world.
It's like when I made a whoopsie with making an inventory, except even worse.
The only things he'd met capable of freely bending and carving through space on the fly were Khans in their territory, and his bane. Khan's could only because it was their territory, something Rory figured was primarily facilitated by Eon. His bane, meanwhile, had specialized mainly in spatial distortions at this point.
And it's a fucking cheater, can't forget that.
No, he wasn't growing more annoyed over the fact that he'd lost tier seven. What could possibly suggest that?
"So…. How exactly do I fix this?" Rory pondered for a moment. When he'd had accidents with inventory making, it had been because he'd disrupted local space from expanding and contracting it around other 'containers' of space. This time, he'd outright cut space without properly linking or connecting the points, without the use of something like a Null Window to aid.
Thinking for a moment, Rory snapped his fingers.
Good thing I spent so much time pondering space concepts while I was put on a two-year time-out.
Typically, space would attempt to 'smooth over' the disturbances, usually by drawing in other space to patch the hole, like water poured into an uneven basin. In this case, he attempted to cut through space to form a tunnel between two points but failed to establish the connection properly due to his inexperience. With such a deep cut through space, it would probably attempt to swallow up a whole lot of outside space.
Well, I can work with this as a training exercise.
Hell, most of his thoughts during his two-year Mind Palace exile revolved entirely around closing rifts in space; if anything, this was perfect training wheels.
Focusing on the isolated point, Rory closed his eyes and at the same time unrestrained his cognition. Probing at the 'wound' in the fabric of space, Rory used his intent to pull the 'edges' together, like suturing a physical wound. Then, tapping into his newly obtained affinity in combination with his lattice affinity, Rory managed to seal the entire thing off with a purely conceptual 'coordinate crystal.'
A whole lot of mumbo jumbo, and in the end, when Rory opened his eyes -after resealing his cognition- the result was completely ordinary space, his basement no longer in danger of collapsing into a singularity.
"Guess that's the new affinity and upgraded Eyes investigated," Rory snorted. "Not exactly how I meant to go about it, but hey, results are results."
Future practice was definitely necessary, but at least now Rory knew it would probably be wise to set up some specific 'training area' meant to handle this sort of stuff, well in advance of when he actually tried.
Done with hanging out in his dark basement, even if with his eyes he could see through the darkness without issue, Rory made his way back to the main floor of his home. Since Roxy had started living within his house, he'd made a point of making it, well, homely, with actual proper furniture.
Some of which were made by himself, others of which he couldn't be bothered to make, and instead bought.
The joys of being Mr. Lord Founder, I've got all the money in the world… Or at least as far as Ehkorrus goes. So, I've got all the money in Ehkorrus… You know what, I'm ruining this for myself.
Seated at the small kitchen table, Rory waited as the suns rose, enjoying the early morning. As the light began to shine with a growing morning intensity, he heard the familiar patter of feet down the many flights of stairs.
"Good morning, Dad," Roxy yawned as she made her way down the stairs, wearing silver 'silk' sleepwear.
Ilky Moth weave. A basic tier-one monster, it spins nests made of what is basically silk, except for some reason, fire retardant.
Rory could have provided higher-tier materials for the local tailors to work with had he really wanted to. The issue was that Roxy wasn't even a true tier one; higher-tier materials could strain the spirit, much like when he'd first worn his rare-grade armor made from materials he'd stripped from the Tyrant of Earth and Scales.
Alright, maybe not exactly one-to-one, but close enough.
"Good Morning, Roxy," Rory said, smiling at his adopted daughter.
"What's for breakfast?"
"Want me to make something, or do you want to go grab some grub?"
Roxy frowned for a moment, faced with an incredibly important decision, before the gurgle of her stomach answered for her.
"Right, you probably don't want to wait for old Dad to whip something up. Get changed, and we can go grab breakfast."
"Yay!" The girl cheered before bolting up the many stairs.
Tier Eight, but in the end, still just a food jockey.
Walking around Ehkorrus with Roxy, the two of them meandered between food vendors. It had actually surprised Rory in his first few weeks back in Ehkorrus just how many there were, but given the lack of 'real' jobs, no stock market, no marketing, basically nothing of the financial world that existed back on Earth, jobs largely revolved around their adventurers and other combatants, and everything else circled. Armor and weapons were needed, and so those people working those jobs often liked to eat food on the go, and so on.
It was an interesting reflection on economic theory, but one that Rory didn't particularly care about.
I was never a fan of those classes in college anyway.
As the two wandered, Rory eventually had them stop in front of a guarded hole in their wall.
"Lord Founder," The guards said, giving him a short bow.
"Yo," Rory waved as he stepped past them. "How's everything going here?"
"Uhh, she continues to eat…. A lot."
"Figured," Rory chuckled before turning to Roxy. "C'mon, I want you to meet someone."
"In there?" The girl said, looking slightly offput.
"It's fine," Rory chuckled before he flared his aura lightly, almost like he was knocking on a door. Within moments, a sound came from within as Tsarina popped out.
"Lord Khan," Tsarina clacked.
Oh, hey, stringing together two words at a time now. Not bad.
The humanoid bug monster was rapidly growing, now as tall as Roxy herself. Not just that, she was making huge strides in her tier. Only around two months old, she'd already gone from level fifty to level fifty-one, something that generally would take even a fast-climbing ascender around six months.
She was also born at tier fifty, so no big surprises.
Plus, having an all-you-could-eat buffet of tier six and seven monsters that allowed her to expand her hive massively didn't hurt either.
"Tsarina," Rory gave a short nod to the monster. "Meet Roxy, my kid."
Rory emphasized the word, even going as far as to lace a hint of his aura into the word so that it was made abundantly clear what Roxy was to him.
"Scion of the. Lord Khan."
Oh, three words that time.
"Scions is a bit of a fancy word, but sure," Rory said with a shrug. "Roxy, this is Tsarina. You knew her when she was just a little mite empress."
"Oh!" Roxy's eyes widened. "You have a new name!"
"Not new." Tsarina corrected. "I am different. Then what I. Was."
And then the strangest thing happened.
Because Roxy ran forward and hugged the monster.
Oh, heavens above.
Rory could see the guards all but having a panic attack. It was well known that Tsarina was with 'them,' but she was still a monster. Unlike Eia, who'd spent years socializing around people before the greater population of Ehkorrus ever even existed, Tsarina was still very in touch with her monstrous aspects.
Tsarina herself seemed confused. Usually, a sudden lunge was a sign of attack, and no one had ever wanted to test how well she could control her instincts by doing as much. Yet Roxy seemed unbothered. A higher-tier lunging at her would have been one thing; her survival instincts would have prevented her from lashing out anyway. But something that wasn't even tier one yet?
Had it not been for Roxy being Rory's daughter, there was a chance she might have lashed out, purely driven by instinct. It was part of the reason she had guards, not for her sake, but to prevent any lower tiers from getting any weird ideas in their heads.
Yet, Roxy was Rory's daughter, and so Tsarina stood stiffly as Roxy hugged her.
"You're fuzzy and soft," Roxy said after a moment, pulling away from the monster.
Sometimes she acts like a girl in her teenage years, and sometimes she acts like a girl half her age. Man, I do NOT understand being a girl dad.
Tsarina clanked her mandibles for several seconds, apparently trying to process what had just happened. When she finally stopped, she stepped forward, her several arms raised. For a moment, Rory saw the guards tense their hold on their weapons, but with a shake of his head, he stopped them.
Because as Tsarina stepped closer to Roxy, she awkwardly and robotically wrapped her arms around the girl.
Now, Rory wouldn't lie and pretend he hadn't loosened his hold on his cognition so he could process things at max speed, but after seeing the interaction, he once more resealed it as he smiled.
I think she just made a friend.