Chapter 74 – No Rest for the Wicked

Chapter 74 – No Rest for the Wicked

Emily groggily drags herself out of bed, slipping on a pair of trousers and leaving her room. She walks to the kitchen, grabbing a slice of bread from the counter before continuing through to the shop front. Stepping into the room filled with the familiar sound of ticking clocks, Emily frowns as an odd scratching starts at the back of her mind. Ignoring it, she shakes her head and looks to Herber, standing in the middle of the room and watching the door.

“Dad?” she calls questioningly, approaching him and tapping him on the shoulder.

He tilts his head and she freezes as she meets his cold, lifeless eyes, their glassy hue setting off warning signs in her mind. She stumbles a step back as he turns, revealing the line of red drawn across his throat, gushing blood and slowly turning the floor around him into a pool of death.

“What’s wrong, Emi?” he asks with a twisted, gargled tone.

She takes another step back, choking out a sob as Herber’s expression slips into one of confusion.

“What’s wrong, Emi?” he repeats, taking a step forward. “You did this.”

A sharp spike of rock erupts from the ground, spearing Herber’s front foot and holding it firm.

“You killed me,” he says, taking another step and once again having his foot pierced by a pointed stalagmite.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers quietly, retreating further and finding the wall suddenly pressed to her back.

She reaches for the door handle but finds it missing. Glancing over her shoulder, she finds a solid wall with no escape.

“What have you done?” Herber asks as he tries to step forward and falls to his knees when his feet won’t move.

Two more spikes of rock burst out of the ground, ripping through his legs.

“What have you done?” he repeats mindlessly, as if latching onto her weakness, leaning forward and reaching out to her as more rocks tear through his stomach and arms, pinning him in place.

“I’m sorry,” Emily sobs, sliding down the wall and drawing her legs into her chest, hugging them as his brutalised figure looms over her.

“What have you done!” Herber’s mindless confusion morphs into a seething rage as blood pours from his wounds.

The blood trickles down the spikes, joining the pool on the floor and slowly rising, filling the room. Emily cowers against the wall, trying not to listen to his hateful words while repeatedly apologising. The blood pool creeps up, surrounding Emily and holding her down as it rises.

When the blood reaches her chin, Emily is forced to raise her head to try and breathe, meeting Herber’s gaze as she does. The second their eyes meet, all of Herber’s rage fades like a lie, being replaced with a kind, loving smile.

“I love you,” he mouths as the blood swallows them both.

***

Emily wakes with a jolt, cold sweat running down her back, her breathing quick and panicked. Clarity returns to her as she feels Juliana shift in her arms, pulling away and looking up at her with tired confusion.

“Emi?” she asks, a sleepy croak in her voice.

“It’s nothing, just a bad dream,” Emily says, more for herself than her girlfriend.

Nodding in understanding, Juliana pulls Emily in, stroking her hair in reassurance. Emily relaxes, pushing away the unpleasant dream and enjoying Juliana’s attention.

After a few minutes, she pulls away, sliding out from under the covers and checking The Clock on her bedside table. It reads 8 am, so Emily stands up and stretches before grabbing some clean clothes and hopping in the shower. By the time she returns, Juliana is sitting up in bed, rubbing the crust from her eyes.

“Morning,” she says with a yawn.

“Morning,” Emily replies with a smile, walking towards her workbench to equip the Claws out of habit.

Ah, I need to remake these. Maybe I should make them a projectile weapon as well, it worked well when it happened accidentally against the wendigo.

Mentally creating a note for the Claws’ next iteration, she turns back to face Juliana who has climbed out of bed to approach her.

“I’m gonna go shower and get dressed,” Juliana says, wrapping her arms around Emily’s neck and leaning into her.

“Okay, I’m not going to join you for meals today because I have some stuff I need to deal with from the expedition, but I’ll see you in the evening.”

“You better come see me later.”

“Don’t worry, I will,” Emily replies, leaning down and placing a kiss on Juliana’s pouting lips.

“Sure, I’ll consider it, if I ever need help.”

“Good. Now, before I give you a point value, would you like any of the resources we gathered? Everyone is entitled to up to an eighteenth of the actual resources we gathered should you want any of them.”

Emily considers her needs for a moment before replying, “Could I have five counts of each beast material we gathered, other than those we only got a few of, I’ll take whatever I can from those. Then five of each common lesser crystal we gathered along with as many ice, metal, and light as I’m permitted?”

“Sure! In that case, I’ll have those delivered later today and I’ll transfer the rest of your payment now.”

He reaches for his crest, dramatically tapping it, releasing a small burst of wind, before stretching his hand out for Emily’s. She obliges, taking her silver crest from within her robes and tapping it against his hand. She watches the number on the back of her crest soar up, increasing till it comes to a halt reading ‘1840’. Emily can’t help the satisfied grin that forms on her face as she reads the amount.

Perfect, this is enough to start recreating interesting items from the market.

“If you would like the full breakdown of the harvests and how we valued them just let me know,” Oscar says, pulling her attention away from her crest.

“No, it’s fine. I’ll trust your word,” she responds with a smile.

I don’t care that much even if he did cheat me. I’m not going to be using these points normally anyway. This will be plenty to last until I reach third circle.

“Wonderful! Now, would I be able to place an order for...”

After a quick discussion about selling him some more grenades, Emily waves Oscar out of the door and returns to her experiment, unsealing the Mensacus again. She next tests water and wind mana, finding both utterly useless against the corruption. The last of the common elements she can utilise is light, which burns away some of the corruption like fire, but it gains less ground than fire did before it reaches a stalemate with the corrupted mana.

Fire and light. I already know it can eat mana-resistant metal, so testing metal mana is pointless.

Next, she tries lightning mana, finding almost the same result as light.

“Okay, so it deals poorly against light and heat. I should be able to make this work,” she mumbles to herself while reaching a strand of purple spatial mana towards the tooth.

She watches with intrigue as the two seem to pass through each other, the corruption only burning the spatial mana a fraction of a second before it makes contact with the tooth.

How interesting. I’ll have to study spatial mana’s interactions further.

She notes that down for later before standing up and walking to the steam source in the corner.

“I should update you soon too,” she muses, running her hand along the smooth metal top of the primitive magical steam generator with intimate familiarity.

A spark of machina spreads through the machine, igniting the magical array within and breathing life into her workshop with the hiss of steam. First, she takes a fresh chunk of black iron from her materials collection, selecting a piece an inch larger than the Mensacus in all dimensions. She heats the metal in her hands with a quick cast of burning hands.

I should make some better spells for manufacturing. I could definitely design some for better-targeted heating and shaping if I put in a little time.

Brushing away the thought, she brings the glowing hot metal to one of her large machines, passing it through two heavy-duty rollers and forming it into a sheet a few millimetres thick. Next, she pulls a sketch, detailing the Mensacus’ exact dimensions, from her system notebook and overlays it with the metal. She moves the sheet between a few machines, cutting and pressing the metal until it forms a perfect shell to snugly fit the tooth.

Letting the metal cool, she tests the tooth’s fit, sliding it in through the open top.

“Perfect!” she says with satisfaction.

Moving on, she brings up another virtual image of the tooth, this one showing the fine network of cracks covering it.

If I’m right, the meeting points of these cracks should be focal points for the mana release of the curse.

She probes the tooth with light mana, finding it to be a nice balance between aggression and submission for her tests. She repeatedly pokes with a strand of light mana, noting points that give more or less resistance, quickly picking out the focal points with the strongest corrupted mana release.

Thought so. It’s just like working with a magic crystal.

With her theory proven, she overlays the virtual image showing the strongest focal points onto the black iron shell. She takes the shell to her drill press and carefully cuts ten fine, tapered holes through the metal.

Once satisfied with the holes, she tests the tooth’s fit again, making sure all of the focal points line up correctly before grabbing a chunk of white iron. She leaves the tooth in the shell, closing the top and sealing it shut before melting the white iron into a liquid form in a small crucible and pouring it over the black iron.

She uses metal-attributed mana to carefully guide the molten metal into the holes, filling them completely and making solid contact with the tooth within. The glowing molten metal slowly spreads across the cold black surface, seeping into every gap she left and sealing the tooth in.

She lets the metal cool, holding it in place with mana until it turns solid enough to keep its form, before carefully applying water and ice mana to quickly finish it without weakening the material. After a few minutes of careful work, she sits back and stares at the glistening white ovoid before her, feeling the malevolent mana leaking from it with a satisfied grin.

“Done. Now onto the sealing array!”