Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Four. Putting the Magic into Ritual Magic.

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Four. Putting the Magic into Ritual Magic.

Bob flipped the page on his drawing pad with a sigh. He was only halfway through his second pad, and he was getting rather tired of mapping mana flows.

They'd been at it for four days. It turned out that to properly map the mana flows, you had to watch them for a few minutes.

Trebor had informed him that if he really wanted to map the mana flows, Thidwell's method was insufficient, and he would need to check the flows at various times of the day, several times a month, for a few years.

Acknowledging that this would require time that wasn't available, he'd conceded that Thidwell's method would work, less rather than more, but it wouldn't cause them to fail the task at hand.

Still, they probably only needed another day, perhaps a day and a half, and then they'd have a comprehensive map of the mana flowing through the valley.

As he brought up his persistent effect mana sight, he started to trace the mana flows. Six hundred and eighty-three days left.

Two days later, Bob stood in Thidwell's office with Bailli and Erick, watching as the huge man flipped through their notebooks, nodding and muttering to himself.

Thidwell closed his eyes, an expression of intense concentration on his face. One hundred seconds later, an opaque, three-dimensional map floated in the air, laying out the valley in detail, with tiny blue lines of mana running through it.

Thidwell reached down, touched a section of the map, then pulled his finger up, drawing a silvery line from the map. Once his finger reached a foot above the map, the line suddenly expanded, and the area Thidwell had touched was enlarged, allowing the smallest of details to be seen.

Thidwell looked down at the pads on his desk, opened one, and compared the map on the paper to the map in the air.

Nodding, he pointed at the pads on the table. "Start verifying," he growled, "with four of us, we should have the map ready by lunch."

Bob poked the illusionary map, pulling his finger up and displaying a section. He reached for a pad and started leafing through it to find the right section.

Thidwell was eerily accurate, as they'd finished verifying that the illusionary map was accurate just as Erick's stomach let out an audible growl.

"Why don't you two," he nodded to Bailli and Erick, "head on down and sort out lunch, then bring it back up," he gestured towards Bob, "I need to talk to him privately for a few minutes."

Bailli and Erick gave Bob a look of sympathy as they headed out the door.

Once it had closed, Thidwell turned to face Bob. "How much have you told them about your plan to bring your people here?"

"Bailli knows, and I presume Erick does as well," Bob replied.

"Are they aware of the scope?" Thidwell asked.

"I told Bailli how many people are on Earth," Bob shrugged, "but those kind of numbers are hard to understand; I mean, you know intellectually what the number means, but finding a frame of reference for it is harder, after all, how many flakes of snow are in a snowstorm?"Read latest chapters at novelhall.com Only

Thidwell nodded grimly and gestured to the map. "One of the reasons we've mapped everything out is so that we can accommodate the structures that will need to be built to house and store people."

Thidwell cast a spell, and a tiny replica of the Adventurers Guild in Holmstead appeared on the map. He cast another spell, and the mana flows on the map adjusted, subtly in some places, dramatically in others.

"You'll be effectively building a city," Thidwell rumbled, "so we need to also consider how that will impact the mana flows before we start building the first Dungeon."

Bob nodded slowly.

"Can you show what the valley will look like once we have all forty of the Dungeons built and driven down to the eleventh floor?" Bob asked.

"I can," Thidwell acknowledged, "but understand that with each floor you add, the accuracy of the model decreases slightly."

The Adventurers Guild disappeared from the map as Thidwell cast another spell, causing forty mausoleums to appear, in a relatively neat grid, eight by five.

Bob watched the mana flow through the model of the valley. Some of the flows had changed their course, running directly towards a Dungeon, while others had shifted to join together, forming thicker flows. Ultimately, all the mana flows now ran to a Dungeon.

Bob nodded. He could see why the Dungeons weren't perfectly spaced apart. The mana flows wouldn't have been equal.

"Ok," he mumbled as he walked around the model.

"Yep," Bob replied.

"So even though twenty-five million is a lot, it's not that much overall," Bailli said.

"Not even one percent," Bob said sadly, "my country alone has three hundred and thirty million people in it, give or take."

Both Erick and Bailli shook their heads while Thidwell frowned.

"Luckily, I have six hundred and eighty-one days to find a solution for everyone else, and hopefully, I'll have a Dungeon, and a tower sorted out soon enough, and I'll start bringing over people who are better equipped to deal with this," Bob finished.

Thidwell had agreed to help build a small test Dungeon on the corner of the valley closest to the glacier, which was diagonal to the corner where they were going to build the Dungeon/Tower.

Bob needed a Dungeon to run people through when he started recruiting. He'd managed to convince Thidwell that they should slap a two-story dormitory over the top of the Dungeon so that they'd at least have some form of housing. Eventually, the Dungeon would be rebuilt anyway.

So Bob found himself laying out a ridiculous amount of copper wire in an intricate pattern, spread over ten thousand square feet. The edges of the pattern were a square, measuring one hundred feet on each side.

Of course, the sides weren't perfectly straight, as the mana flows dictated a nudge inward here, a smidge outward there. A circle of wire touched all four sides of the square, while a helix of wire connected the corners of the square to the sides of the circle, the end of each helix flaring out in a graceful arc to marry the side of the circle.

And none of these were perfect because they all had to be adjusted slightly.

Inside the circle, every few feet, a wire led off to spiral into the center, where Bob sat, in a very small, rough circle of braided copper wire, cable thick.

Thidwell, Erick, and Bailli had watched patiently as Bob had laid the copper wiring in place, which had taken him the remainder of yesterday afternoon and nine hours today to accomplish.

Bob closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Monroe was tucked away in his inventory, sleeping.

This ritual was going to shape the mana conduits above the Dungeon and the first floor. And thanks to some help from Trebor, the foundation of the building.

Bob pulled a pouch filled with mana crystals out of his inventory and poured two thousand mana crystals into his lap. He stored the pouch away and thrust his hands into the pile of mana crystals. He focused on the pattern of the ritual arrayed all around him, intent on the effect he was determined to invoke, and then he stretched his matrix from his hands and into the mana crystals and pulled.

He felt the mana flowing out of the crystals and through his body, a not unfamiliar sensation.

Then the array activated, and he felt a massive draw on his matrix.

Bob gasped and then clenched his teeth as a torrent of mana raged from the mana crystals that were rapidly dissipating, through his matrix, and into the rapidly energizing array around him. He focused his mind on the design of the mana flows and the solid granite design of the Dungeon.

Seconds passed, and he ignored the burning sensation that traced his veins, focusing only on the desired result.

He didn't notice when the ground beneath him shimmered and twisted as reality was remade by his will.

Nor did he realize that a stairway had opened near the edge of the southern wall, leading down but leaving the array suspended in space above it as the ritual raced towards completion.

Bob's concentration on the purpose of the ritual didn't falter until the last mana crystal dissipated, and the flow of mana rushing through his matrix ended.

He leaned forward with a groan as his muscles tried to decide if they were going to cramp or not. Two thousand seconds was a long time to channel mana through your matrix. Opening his eyes, he was pleased to see that the entire area had been turned into a smooth granite slab with a delicate inlay of charred copper.

Bob looked at the copper cable that had encircled him and was shocked to see that it had fused together and sunk into the granite, leaving only the top flush with the stone.

Standing up, he swayed in place for a moment, then found his balance and walked over to the others.

Bailli and Erick were whispering excitedly to each other as they both referenced a copy of the design he'd laid out while Thidwell looked at him impassively.

As he approached, Thidwell's face broke out into one of his malicious smiles, and he nodded to Bob, "Well cast," he rumbled as he gestured to the granite slab, "it normally takes people quite a few attempts before they are able to maintain their concentration on their intent for the duration of the ritual, but it appears that you remained steadfast."

Thidwell pointed towards the stairs leading down, drawing Bob's attention to them.

"Let's go finish it," he rumbled, "you handled the twin ritual above," his grin widened as he unknowingly echoed Trebors suggestion, "maybe you can perform the next as a triple."