Chapter 37: Perry Bites Off More Than He Can Chew

Chapter 37: Perry Bites Off More Than He Can Chew

There were 4 basic spells that Perry wanted to work on today.

Summoning,

Unethical Blood rituals,

Protective charms,

Disintegration (with chain effects, if possible)

Frost and fire spells

Modifying the properties of Areonite.

Permanent floating armaments, to create a linked computer.

(that was more than four, wasn’t it?)

Starting from the top. Summoning rituals were largely similar, they usually involved candles set up in a specific pattern, incenses that would either attract or repell certain entities, and a token of meaning to these creatures. Sometimes there was a chant or a hymn to a specific deity to really get their attention, but the basic principle was the same.

All Perry had to do was find the type of summon that would work well for him. Or types.

Something that had occurred to him when he was fighting insects was a more-lethal option would come in handy should he have to perform another invasive species extermination.

Perry originally wanted to summon elysian warriors, who would be strong, wise, and capable of exercising judgement, unfortunately they each required a non-refundable proof of the summoner’s skill in righteous battle.

Which Perry couldn’t exactly produce en masse.

After an hour or so of flipping back and forth through the summoning chapter of mom’s spellbook, Perry narrowed the choices between Klameth, who liked carrion, and Ordenn, who took payment in gold.

After much deliberation, Perry decided on the Ordenn. Gold was expensive, but they didn’t give Perry the impression that they’d wander off and eat people if he left them alone.

Rob people or sell them a time-share, maybe.

Perry could deal with that.

Summon Ordenn: (Intermediate Difficulty)

Ingredients: One jangle of gold. Beeswax candles placed in a hexagon, Realm-piercing crystal dagger, Gold-tinge flower incense, twine from an Alastran monk’s sackcloth robe.

Find a location where two or more merchants are haggling within earshot, set up the candles two paces away from each other, with the twine from the monk’s robe lining the inside of the hexagon.

Place the gold and incense in the center of the hexagon, light the incense, then back out and light the candles, being careful not to allow any part of your body across the line created by the twine.

Once the candles are lit, if circumstances are right, an Ordenn may show interest in your call. Their body will become visible passing through the incense.

The user can then (carefully) use the realm-piercing dagger to pierce the veil and bring the Ordenn to this reality. Be especially careful not to allow the Orden to drag you back to their realm of greed for an eternity of servitude.

Once the Ordenn has arrived, you may negotiate with it for a term of service.

Perry read and re-read the entry, setting aside all the tools he needed for the summoning.

Okay, I have everything except for a realm-piercing dagger.

A realm piercing dagger was chipped out of realm-piercing crystal, and looked something like a mundane obsidian dagger chipped out of volcanic glass, albeit turquoise in color, faintly glowing, and allowing the user to see and cut the veil where certain entities were trying to push through.

An absolutely critical ingredient in summoning spells.

Perry hefted the head-sized chunk of volcanic glass and turned it this way and that, eyes narrowing as the world outside began to fade.

Now, how should I do this?

Perry didn’t know anything about making arrowheads and knifes out of obsidian, and he didn’t want to ruin this block of realm-piercing crystal on the first attempt.

He would hate to waste his time and money like that, and there was only one other block of realm piercing crystal this big on Earth that he knew of, and it wasn’t in Franklin city, and it was much better quality, making it nearly priceless.

In short, he had one shot at it.

So Perry watched youtube videos and practiced on a dummy piece of obsidian he’d bought for that exact purpose.

Chipping away pieces of glass shards with the intention of creating a knife felt awkward and uncomfortable at first, but as the Tinker twitch took over, Perry began going faster and faster, seemingly acclimatizing to what he was doing.

As he went, Perry realized he could likely make several knives from a head-sized chunk of realm-piercing crystal.

He also realized that physics were getting a bit wonky as they interacted with his Tinker Twitch, as the piece of obsidian he was working on was gradually lengthening as he worked on it.

How?

F**K you, that’s how.

A chunk of obsidian that had started about the length of his palm was now nearly two feet long and growing as he chipped more and more off of it. Perry’s hypothesis was that the obsidian being broken off was being reabsorbed because of his Tinker Twitch, ormore obsidian was being created from his attunement to match the mental image of what he was trying to create.

In either case, the obsidian blade kept growing until it was three and a half feet long.

I think...I think I got the hang of this.nôvel binz was the first platform to present this chapter.

Perry admired what was basically a straight sword for a moment before setting it aside on the nearby pallet full of sheet steel.

The blade turned sideways on one of the straps, causing the edge to slip through the metal sheets like water before it impacted against Perry’s ankle.

HP: 2

Perry carefully picked up the glass sword by the handle, went over to a vice and clamped the handle in place before setting it aside.

Accidentally made an SCP.

Obsidian was an incredibly sharp material, nearly monomolecular, but its biggest weakness was lack of toughness, hardness and flexibility.

Obsidian is a 5-5.5 on the Mohs scale, with similar stones having and absolute hardness of 48 @Mohs 5. If we estimate the improvement from Spendthrift at a conservative 40 times effectiveness, that makes obsidian...

1920 on the absolute hardness scale, compared to diamond which has 1500.

Meaning...depending on how much Spendthrift actually improves obsidian, that near monomolecular blade might be a little harder than diamond, or sitting right at diamond.

“AAaah!” Brendon screamed and ran for the exit, still patting his head and rubbing his tummy. “My arms aren’t my arms!” he shrieked, running out into the parking lot.

Perry sighed, tossed aside his timer and sprinted after Brendon.

Somebody had to stop him before he ran into traffic.

After a spirited twenty second chase, Perry managed to herd the panicked teen away from traffic and closer to the motel, where he stumbled to a halt, sinking to his knees and wrapping his arms around himself.

“That was the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me,” Brendon said before looking down at his arms, clasping and unclasping his hands. “I felt like someone’s puppet. It was awful, and I never wanna do it again.”

Perry wordlessly clasped a hand on Brendon’s shoulder as a single tear rolled down the football star’s cheek.

Perry took a deep breath.

“Burger?” Perry asked.

“Oh, hell yeah!” Brendon said, leaping to his feet.

“Ow,” the oaf winced as Perry pulled the blood contract dart out of his shoulder.

***Later***

“Oh, my god, this is literally the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” Brendon said as he devoured the meat-substitute burger.

Perry, meanwhile, was arranging the burgers he’d cooked in order of their structural integrity.

The first burger had nearly broken Brendon’s teeth, while the last burger had been superburger.

So...his perk had applied the structural integrity enhancement to the first burger he’d made, but not the last. A burger’s purpose was to be eaten and being that strong was counter to its purpose.

Does that mean there’s some kind of orientation that occurs?

Perry’s hypothesis was that his Perk took direction from his brain about what was a good or bad attribute to have for a specific creation, but this process took a little bit of time to establish...a groove in Perry’s brain. A category for food, perhaps?

Perry took a lead pipe and smashed the first burger as hard as he could.

Brendon blinked.

The pipe wrapped partially around the burger, leaving a small dent in the bun itself.

Now what if I made a triple decker burger with all the fixings? Would it be as loose and sloppy as a normal one, or would it hold together better while still being edibly soft?

Perry frowned, inspecting the dent in his lead pipe before glancing over at Brendon, who was giving him a thumb’s up.

And are they safe to consume? I guess we’ll find out.

“Man you should host a barbecue at your hotel, or something. This is awesome.”

Perry frowned.

“You know, my grampa is in town, and I wanted to show him my motel, anyway. A barbecue sounds like a great idea.”

“Your motel?” Brendon asked.

“The motel I work at. My job.”

“Oh, cool.” Brendon nodded before frowning. “How come I never see anyone else working here?”

“Cuz I’m that good,” Perry said, before a thought occurred to him.

“Hey Brendon, you want a job cleaning the pool and stuff?”

“Really?” Brendon asked, eyes widening.

“Yeah, I’m in good with the owner.” Perry said. And it’ll keep Brendon in my line of sight so he’s less likely to get kidnapped.

“Well, that would be great! With school out, I was looking for a job! I was gonna go apply at Burger Joint this weekend.”

“Nah, you can work here. Lemme just call the owner.”

What followed next was Perry speaking into a dead line about how great Brendon was and negotiating his hourly pay. After a long (fake) conversation, Perry gave Brendon the good news.

“Yep, you’re hired!”

“Wow, awesome!” Brendon said, wiping a napkin across his mayo-smeared mouth. “So like, what do I do?”

“Well, I’ll teach you how to clean the pool and the gym and man the front desk.” Perry said. “It’s not hard.”

“Whew,” Brendon said, “That’s good.”

“First job you can do is clean the pool and the area around it for the barbecue,” Perry said, pulling out his phone and sending out invites to his friends and family.

No one turns down free food.

Perry glanced out the window at the setting sun and frowned. Only managed to work on two of the spells I wanted.

The blood-contract dart was an unmitigated success, though.

Ah well, I can work on the next ones the day after tomorrow.

DING!

Perry glanced down at his phone.

DAD:

That sounds awesome! Especially with the whole family in town! Can I invite some of your mom’s and my friends as well?

“Oh, god, what have I done?” Perry whispered.

New Quest: Host a Super Barbecue!

Reward: Variable