Chapter 175: Endless – Part 1

Chapter 175: Endless – Part 1

The levity seems to be over, so after a short moment of silence, Roxanne promptly continues, "Anyway, these robes are really well made." And she points to the inside of the gray robes, which are lined with pretty silver patterns.

Mages use robes lined with mana-conductive material (or made of a mana-conductive material itself) because the cloth can move around, which allows it to adapt its shape to the pattern of a mage's involuntary release of mana as they chant, increasing a spell's efficiency through a positive feedback loop, while plate armor is too stiff to do the same. This increase in efficiency follows a similar principle to a staff's crystal, which is filled with a material that's magically similar to the type of spell that a mage normally casts, and like boosts like, so since you always release some mana that's already attuned to the spell that you're casting (unless you have 100 in [Mana Efficiency]), every mage benefits from wearing a robe instead of plate.

And the craftsmanship of this robe is at a surprisingly high level.

Item InfoMaterial'Unknown type of plant-based fiber; high-purity silver; enchanting gems; plant-based dyes'Quality'90 for thread; 98 for silver; average of 98 for the gems; average of 55 for the dyes'Anomalies'Silver thread that captures mana and circulates it around the robe, boosting a chanted spell's power'Enchantments'Non-standard [Breeze]; non-standard [Wind Armor]; non-standard [Rainbow Shield]; non-standard [Swift Foot]; non-standard [Fly]; unknown electric enchantment; unknown enchantment'Origin InsightsA masterfully crafted garment clearly oriented for use in battle. The robe's top is mildly tight-fitting but very elastic, displaying the wearer's body type without significantly hampering the robe's magical boost, while the bottom is loose for better movement and just short enough to not drag against the floor, implying that the creator values effectiveness the most but can't give up completely on appearance. The simple but solemn decorations imply a military origin and possibly even a level of military rank, though their shape could also imply a religious meaning. More insights require either very high 'Wisdom' or cultural knowledge about the creator's culture

Indeed, the robe's chest area reminds me of a military dress uniform jacket as it has broad shoulders and a neat, straight look. As for the decorations, it has three black crosses on each shoulder and one over the heart, which would make it easy to recognize the mage's rank without raising a sign that says, "assassinate me; I'm a high-ranking officer." Though, being the sole mage in a sea of tin cans didn't help in that regard.

Unfortunately, we didn't find a "flash and nail HE grenade" in the pockets, but at least we recovered a wand that we can also inspect.

But our merry time is interrupted as we get worrying news from the Horns.

They breached the tornado, but the first squad to do so was "teleported" to another level without noticing anything. They only realized it even happened because the fellowship bond insisted that they were in a "different, unreachable space," something that happens when a party member is in a different "level" of a dungeon than yours.

If not for the safety [Gate] board, they could've been permanently stranded there, which is exactly why Space mages are so important for dungeon exploration.

But the truly worrying part is how this seems like a trap made by the dungeon. If the Dungeon Master is hostile to explorers, what other dangers can we expect from a being that is kind of like the god of this place?

Even the horns understand this and call off the exploration for now to give us time to think this through.

Since the inspection got interrupted, Lily suggests we check up on Chesa, and we learn that the mergirl has rested enough to be able to speak properly, so we decide to go to her as she has some explaining to do.

After I give Kaatohe a brief visit to tell her that everyone's fine, we go to Chesa's room in the Carrier.

The pretty and very slender Thalanthro girl sits up the moment we enter. She's wearing a cute set of pink pajama shorts and a top, but her choice of attire seems to cover very little, considering her usual clothes, allowing us to savor her long, light-blue arms and legs and even get a peek at her lacy white panties. But then we notice that she doesn't seem to wear a bra, which is expected since she has literally no tits.

"How are you feeling? You gave us a bit of a scare there," Lily kindly remarks before I can attempt to huskily seduce the girl.

Chesa smiles softly, seemingly not noticing our lecherous stares, and begins spilling everything, "I'm doing fine, just tired. I don't know what exactly happened, but I suddenly felt like I could 'control' the lightning of the javelin, though I couldn't really control it, so I guess that means that it was through my Gift rather than 'Magic Power.'" Then she giggles girlishly, which is adorable.

But yeah, we expected that explanation.

She isn't done, though, and after a moment of consideration, she quietly adds as she cutely grabs her chin, deep in thought, "But once I let the lightning course through me, I felt so full of energy, which was a first, like, seriously, and then starting the storm became so easy that I just did it."

The only time the wives and I have experienced something like that was when Ciel received a Boon from the God of the Sun and erased an entire encampment from existence, and we're pretty sure that isn't what happened with Chesa, so we can't really relate to her.

"Well, you guys' Gifts are similar to each other but not mine, so you should know what it's like," I wryly remark with a shrug.

Lily lets out a sigh of relief and hums in agreement, "Yeah, we do. I just wanted to make sure she didn't overexert herself because it sure looks like it's easy to."

Samkelo also hums, but in understanding, and then he explains, "It kind of feels like a muscle that you 'pull,' and then it hurts to use it for a while."

"You, overexerting yourself?" Yunia questions with a scoff, still feeling like his ego is a delightfully squishy target to step on with her pointy heels.

And the gnome manchild doesn't seem phased, though he fails to hide a mischievous grin as he reminisces, "What? It was fun to use it at first, so I conjured a bunch of stuff, but I was pretty bad at it, and I ended up 'pulling the muscle.'"

Then Lily mercilessly exposes an embarrassing moment, "You also poisoned yourself trying to conjure weed directly into your blood, or something."

He does have the decency to look away in shame, but it barely lasts a second as he owns up to it, "It was edibles, and I conjured them directly into my stomach. But yeah, it's easy to conjure 'partially-magical' matter, which behaves a bit weirdly in your stomach if you don't specifically 'build' the matter to be eaten."

Ciel is reminded of a funny moment, so she kindly shares, "Exactly, it's like eating 'solidified mana.' Dungeons with a theme are often made of it because it's a cheap way to mimic matter, and since they also mimic food, basically every new adventurer eats some when they get tired of [Conjure Bland Meal], so then they soon come running back to the temple because they think they got poisoned." And she gives Aoi and me a pointed look as we ate some sausages during our first delve into the Legado dungeon.

"Technically, it is poison; I can make antidotes for that," Roxanne suddenly chimes in.

And the chocolate angel makes a skeptical face. "Yeah, but it's not... poison poison, the bad kind that monsters use. It's just indigestion."

Then the gnome turns to the succubus and asks an honest, curious question, "Wait, what exactly is your degree in? I thought you were just a chemist?"

"Alchemist, and I specialize in potions and antidotes," she proudly corrects him after a telepathic prompt from me.

His eyebrows rise up, and his mouth widens in a very "Samkelo" grin as he comes up with a stupid idea. "Does she know what weed is? Is there weed in this world? I want to know if there's magical weed."

Alissa suddenly blurts out an innocent question with a cute, confused frown, "We do have weed-..." -then I share a bit of information with her, and her pretty eyes open wide in realization- "and I just realized that 'weed' is slang..."

And this talk unearths some memories from Hana. "Oh, we have that! It's called 'hash'! But it's only common on the Mainland," she happily exclaims and basks in the nostalgia of her memories.

I read her mind, and I'm surprised but also not really that she showed her boobs to some teens in exchange for hash when she was younger.

The gnome makes a pensive look as he comments, "Huh... well, it used to be called 'hash' or 'hashish' on Earth, too."

So I kindly explain, "Some words here are the same as those on Earth, but I believe it's mostly just ancient words."

The Earthlings raise eyebrows at that, but they make no comment as it seems that none of them share my fondness for etymology.

Then Roxanne chimes in too, "Back in Rabanara, I know that the expensive leaf 'cake' or 'bush' used for smoking has hash in it along with other stuff."

And Samkelo's grin returns. "You guys have it good! Can you believe that the Chimeras hardly smoke stuff? They like some alcohol and fermented stuff, but aside from that, I only found a psychedelic leaf that you eat."

This isn't like programming with computers; it's more like a "symbol" that evokes certain memories for the enchanter, helping them infuse their will into the mana that they release onto the walls of the void, attuning them to the "code." The enchanter's "will" is so strongly infused into the area that it now converts and manipulates any mana that comes near it just like a mage would, allowing non-mages to cast spells just by feeding mana into the gem.

Enchanting "code" is learned through entering a trance by repeating mantras so intensely that it becomes ingrained within your mind, and then you just need to remember the "symbol" to trigger the trance again. It's similar to how [Alteration Magic] requires absolute concentration, but enchanting has a much greater margin for error since you're only dealing with the highly reactive particle that is mana instead of real matter, which is naturally resistant to being altered through magic.

So Lina has to find these "components" and either: create channels in the gem so that she can send mana into the components and only the components, or open up the gem and try to sense the "flavor" of the attuned area just like I do with [Sense Mana]. The former is riskier but easier to analyze, while the latter is completely safe but harder to draw concrete information from.

She does the latter first, and then the former if she deems the component safe enough, but there are quite a number of them, so it takes a while to go through each one. The enchantments aren't particularly complex, though, so she eventually manages to reach a conclusion.

The javelin's main purpose was to contain large amounts of their unique "angry" magical electricity and then release it all in a very chaotic way to best use its specialty "wild" aspect to cause as much destruction as possible.

Quite the interesting use of magic, I must say.

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