Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Naturally, they guarded the secrets of their alchemy very, very closely. They invested a great deal of their newfound wealth into security, well aware that if their competitors managed to get their hands on their secrets their ascent to greatness would be greatly jeopardized.

Today, Zach and Zorian were trying to break into House Letova’s alchemy repository. They weren’t doing it because they honestly wanted to steal their alchemical secrets, though Zorian would take a look at their records if they succeeded, simply to satisfy his curiosity. No, they were doing it because they wanted to practice their ability to break into secure areas.

The problem was simple. They needed to get the imperial dagger that was stored in the Eldemarian royal palace. However, the palace was way out of their league at the moment. They just didn’t have enough experience in breaking into places like that. Thus, Zorian had hit upon the idea of targeting minor Houses, gradually tackling greater and greater challenges until they gathered enough expertise in infiltration to tackle their real goal.

They had already tried their hand at breaking into some wealthy estates, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. House Letova would be their biggest challenge yet.

"You know," Zach had told him before they launched the mission, "I am amused by the fact that you have qualms about stealing people’s secrets by rooting through their minds, but have no problems at all about physically rooting through their stuff."

"It’s not the same," Zorian protested.

"I know," Zach said. "And don’t get me wrong, it actually sets me at ease that you have some standards about your mind magic usage. I can’t help but find it a bit amusing, though."

"You don’t seem to have any problems going along with this," Zorian remarked.

"Nah, I’ve done things like this all the time when I was alone," Zach said dismissively. "Only with less sneaking in and more blasting the door off its hinges and powering through the wards. One of these days we’ll have to do these raids my way. It’s a rush. I bet you’d love it."

Zorian snorted. "I bet I wouldn’t," he countered. "Though maybe you’re on to something. Somehow I feel less conflicted about taking people’s notebooks, research documentation and the like than I do about taking their thoughts and memories. Mind magic is… something I can do on a whim. It’s easy, it’s convenient and I don’t think I’m a good enough person to resist the temptation to use it all the time if I get into the habit of using it lightly. But this kind of thing… it’s terrifying and stressful and takes effort to organize and pull off. I’ll probably never feel casual about it."

"Hmm," hummed Zach. "I wouldn’t be so sure. Almost anything gets pretty mundane if you do it long enough. But it is true that raids like this aren’t something you do on impulse alone. Anyway, we came here to steal alchemical recipes, not to talk philosophy. Are we doing this or not?"

"We’re doing it," responded Zorian. "Let’s go."

Nine restarts had passed since the restart in which Zach and Zorian had found where the orb of the first emperor was located. The two of them had worked on their skills, sought out experts and raided places for practice and critical secrets. They expanded their research initiatives massively, making use of the orb’s memory bank to store all the research notes that resulted from this, and then found new sources of money and materials to pay for all this. Sudomir was completely interrogated several times and his knowledge of the invasion and soul magic made full use of. They worked with Daimen to get in touch with his friends and colleagues, narrowing down the location for the piece of the Key that was lost in the Xlotic desert. They worked hard to understand and reverse-engineer the Ibasan gate and tried to figure out a faster, easier way to activate the Bakora Gates.

They managed to enter the orb near the end of this period. They had been forced to design a specialized teleportation spell to do so, which took multiple restarts due to the rarity of pocket dimension magic and the corresponding difficulty of finding the right experts and manuals. When they had finally managed to get in, they found that the pocket dimension did contain a teleport platform that served as an in-built entrance… but the platform had broken down a long time ago due to lack of maintenance. Once the platform was fixed, the spell was no longer necessary… but since they were in the time loop, this repair was undone at the end of every restart. Zach and Zorian eventually stopped bothering to repair the platform and just used the spell to enter and leave as they wish. The spell was the superior option anyway, since it allowed them to enter and leave the orb in any location they wished.

As for the contents of the orb… well, they hadn’t found any more giant hydras inside, much to Zach’s disappointment. They had found a lot of dangerous plants and animals, though, so it was hardly peaceful. They also found a great deal of potions, magical equipment, secret grimoires and valuable materials… virtually all of which had expired, rotted, broken down or were hopelessly outdated. They had high hopes that there was something good buried in all that trash and rubble, and were still stubbornly combing through it.

Mercifully, the general decay of the place also extended to palace defenses. It was clear the palace had once sported impressive wards and a frankly ridiculous number of traps (giant boulders rolling down the corridors… seriously?), but most of them had broken down over the centuries.

Currently, Zorian was sitting on the grass in the middle of an isolated meadow. Not far from him was a simulacrum absorbed in assembling a magical rifle, tirelessly pondering design improvements and occasionally testing out prototypes on a distant rock. Zorian didn’t want to disturb him, but made a mental note to himself to add better sound dampening wards on the final design – those magical rifles he had been building were painfully loud. Though considering how large some of the latest designs were getting, that was to be expected. He had told the simulacrum to design a better rifle, not a portable cannon, dammit!

In any case, Zorian himself was controlling a group of golems against a group consisting of Zach, Alanic, Xvim and Taiven. His four opponents were holding back a lot, or else the golems wouldn’t last very long, but that was okay. This wasn’t a test of his golem making skills – it was a combat exercise meant to test different tactics and figure out the most effective method of controlling and deploying his golems.

He took advantage of a short pause in the battle to quickly check up on his simulacrum in Koth. These days he no longer needed a long chain of telepathic relays to do so – the soul magic knowledge he got from Sudomir had allowed him to devise a method of establishing telepathic contact with his simulacrums through the soul they all shared. He found out that the simulacrum was busy arranging some kind of trade deal along with Daimen and left him to his devices.

Eventually the combat exercise ended and the other four joined Zorian in relaxing on the grass.

Well, they were relaxing until the simulacrum fired its prototype cannon again and startled them all with another devastating boom.

"Gods, Zorian," Taiven complained. "That thing your copy is building is like a miniature siege engine and you’re still not satisfied? What on earth do you need a gun like that for?"

Zorian smiled at her.

"We’re going to kill a giant spider," he told her. "And then we’re going to visit an annoying old woman with its remains…"

Simulacrum number four was worried. He really shouldn’t be, considering what he was and how many times the original had fought the grey hunter by now. If anything, he should be feeling excited – he had a good feeling about this attempt. Their skills had grown, they had become intimately familiar with the grey hunter’s capabilities and they had brought a number of surprises designed specifically to counter it. This could work. This could actually work, unlike so many previous attempts they’d made.