6.8 - Unknown Reactions

6.8 - Unknown Reactions

It took Ziz a while to clear away all the workers near the city. Theo waited near the shore, watching as those people dispersed into the surrounding area. He had wanted to wait to try this until things got dire. Since nothing was working, that moment felt as though it was approaching swiftly. While he had an arsenal of potions, there was only one he could think of that would pair well with his plan.

Until this point, Theo had been moving a handful of stones at a time. It was more efficient than having people carry them by hand, but it was still slow. Collapsing the mountain range to the west had been an option. Their tests had revealed that it was too hard to control the way the mountain fell. The alchemist held a Greater Intelligence Potion in his hand, waiting for the area to clear. He had swapped his Toru’aun Mage’s Core out so that he could equip both Zaul Shadowspirit Core and his Earth Sorcerer’s Core. The Spirit Weaving skill attached to the Shadowspirit core allowed him to empower one skill.

Earth Attunement was the skill that allowed him to move things aligned with the Earth element. Spirit Weaving didn’t have a time limit, but Theo was certain this would work. The skill was already empowered with his willpower, but would experience at least a doubling effect. Consuming the intelligence potion would send him up a few realms of power for that attribute, unlocking even more power. If he drew some willpower from Tero’gal, all the effects combined might make this work.

“Everyone is cleared out,” Ziz said, thumping Theo on the shoulder. “Try not to kill anyone in the city.”

Theo nodded. He drank the potion first, swaying on the spot as his Intelligence rocketed past 40. Once he could stand on his own, he activated the Shadow Weaving ability and focused on his Earth Attunement skill. In an instant, the mountainside lit up. His head swam again. If Ziz wasn’t there to keep him from falling, he would have pitched over onto the gravel pathway. With almost 50 Intelligence fueling the skill, the alchemist reached out with his mind.Cheêck out latest novels at novelhall.com

The side of the mountain was almost a vertical wall of stone. It towered higher than the city itself. In Theo’s vision, it was a sheet of green energy, pulsing with the will of the planet itself. He reached out with his mind, pressing his willpower against those nodes. His aura flickered out as a turbulent bubble of shadows, pressing against that mountain and gaining a few screams from those lingering too close.

“Here we go,” Theo grunted, tugging with all his might.

Seams appeared in the mountain. The green energy buckled under the potent combination of Zaul’s skill and Theo’s own potion. Those seams grew larger as Theo yanked, pulling house-sized boulders down from their perch. More stone fell the more he yanked and the alchemist shifted his focus, watching as the shadow bubble battered the wall. An avalanche—if a vertical drop of rocks could be called that—came next. Piles of stone formed at the bottom.

Theo split his concentration, yanking boulders down as he distributed them around the work site. Those who had remained to watch the event had long-since fled, but Ziz stayed where he was. Shouting words of encouragement, the half-ogre pumped his fist every time a large rock fell from the cliff. The alchemist had piled about fifty feet of boulders and rocks around the base of Qavell when the skill wore off. His shoulders slacked and he lost hold of the massive rock he was holding with his willpower. It slammed into the sea, sending more waves rushing his way.

“One minute of work and a month of progress!” Ziz shouted, cheering with excitement. “That was awesome!”

“This is going to take a week,” Theo said, swaying some more and nearly falling over. He had trouble contending with the cold logic spreading through his mind. High Intelligence was far worse than Wisdom. It was as though all emotion had drained from him, leaving him feeling like an automaton, slave only to logic.

“Sounds about right. One-day cooldown on that bad boy?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Your normal rock-moving ability can still help, though. Unless you’re too busy.”

Theo wasn’t that busy. He didn’t want to be that busy, anyway. He agreed to help Ziz, no matter how long it took to set the city straight. It would be a grueling week of work, but he could do it. If only for the sake of the people in the city above, he would do it. Drinking a steady line of Greater Intelligence Potions was easy enough, but the heavy lifting was done by the Shadow Weaving skill. The alchemist might not admit it, but the effort to collapse part of the cliff had taken something significant from him. He was drained beyond what he would express and only took light work during that first day.

“Even if the spirits don’t like it we can change it later,” Theo said, resting on the sandy beach. He could see a village created by the splinter group of spirits on the far shore. It would be easy enough to teleport over there, demanding that they reunite with the others. But what was the point of that? Tero’gal was meant to be a living thing, not some diorama created by a god. Minor changes, such as the sun and moons, were as far as he would go. That and the occasional trail or feature of the land.

This strategy had proved fruitful from the start. Theo remembered the way spirits acted in other realms. They all danced to someone else’s song. Within Tero’gal, the spirits themselves made the music. Those lost souls wrote the tempo for their lives, dancing however they saw fit. Industries had sprung up throughout the realm. Logging, mining, clothcraft, and so on. While there was no central currency, people bartered for their stuff. Since almost a year passed for each day Theo was away, those things had moved quickly. But not as quickly as things moved on the mortal realm.

If Tero’gal was an analog for the mortal world, Theo could have spread a city over everything in sight. Seed core buildings had a way of creating a civilization overnight. Not the souls of Tero’gal, though. They build their structures by hand. They mined the ore without classes, chopped trees without them... A mortal would puke if they considered doing any of these things without classes.

“My perfect little world,” Theo said, scoffing. “An example for the gods... or what?”

Theo stopped by the Dreamer’s Throne before he left. Tresk came here every day to reassert her power. This was the perfect hiding place. If another person were to come and take it, they would need too many skills that most mortals didn’t have. If a god wanted to claim it, they would deal with the ire of the Arbiter. Even if Khahar didn’t come to help, the Guardians of Faith expansion on the realm would be interesting to contend with. That and the Bubble upgrade, which made it harder for hostile gods to perform interdiction actions both into and out of the realm.

Once he was satisfied with his trip to the realm, Theo allowed himself to slip through reality. He fell back to where he was, finding the weight of the mortal realm comforting. When he entered the lab, Salire had a strange look on her face. It was a mixture of excitement and dread.

“Interesting results,” she said, gesturing to the vial that had been stored on the first floor.

“What is that?”

Theo looked upon a pile of something. Where the vial once was, there was now a mass of material. It appeared as though someone had poured molten metal onto the vial, only to let it cool there. While none of the wood around it was damaged, heat still emanated from the pile.

“Some unknown reaction,” Salire said.

“Are they all like this?”

“Not the one upstairs. Top floor. The second floor is a mess.”

This was an unexpected turn. Aside from explosions, this was the single most reactive thing Theo had witnessed with alchemy. There were plenty of times where he had intentionally forced two reagents to react, resulting in an explosion, but never anything like this. He inspected the stuff on the ground, finding it to be rock-hard foam. It had bound with the floor itself, creating an awkward situation where it was nearly impossible to remove. A job for Ziz and his boys, perhaps.

“What are we waiting for?” Salire said, almost breathless. “The one in the air conditioned room worked!”

“Let’s go.”