Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

[What are you making?] a cheery, excitable voice suddenly sounded in his mind.

Zorian glanced at Novelty, who was currently wandering around the room and inspecting everything within her reach, caressing the items with her hairy spider legs and occasionally taking a nibble when she thought he wasn’t looking. Most of his allies had no real interest in his workshop and what he did there, as they had no interest or deep understanding of magical artifice, but just about everything human-related was new and exciting for Novelty so she insisted on coming along. He suspected she would get bored of it all very soon, but for now she was surprisingly well behaved.

It was amusing, he thought to himself. Once upon a time, her presence here would have driven him up the wall and he would have done all he could to get rid of her. Now, he found her antics to be… kind of nostalgic. She reminded him of an older, simpler time. A time when Novelty had been entirely qualified to teach him mind magic and the aranea had been his only friend. Even though Spear of Resolve had intended to betray him in the end – something he had never actually revealed to the aranea here in the real world – he still felt gratitude towards her and her web.

He sometimes wondered what his life would have been like if they had somehow survived that fateful restart. Would the final outcome have been better with them around, or was their doom a necessary price for him to develop into what he was today? After all, without that reckless ploy he and Spear of Resolve concocted, Red Robe might have decided to stick around in the time loop for a long time. Zorian could easily imagine a situation where he never contacted Zach at all, constantly moving in the shadows in fear of attracting Red Robe’s attention, the aranea his only ally…

[Hey! Why aren’t you answering me?] Novelty protested.

What? Oh right, his project…

[It’s secret,] he told her, shaking his head.

[Secret project…] she said, tapping her legs on the floor excitedly. Rather than backing off, she seemed only more fascinated by the secrecy. [Is it a weapon? Ooh, maybe it’s a collapsible golem that transforms into a giant spider when a command word is spoken!]

[Why would I make a golem in the form of a giant spider of all things?] he asked her, raising an eyebrow at her.

[Well, everything is better with spiders,] she told him matter-of-factly. [Plus, I heard you humans found us cute.]

Zorian gave her an incredulous look.

[What? What?] she demanded, shuffling from side to side in agitation.

[I… think one of your friends played a prank on you or something,] Zorian said diplomatically.

[No way!] she protested. [I have it on good authority that… I mean, you humans like small, furry animals, right? I saw your little sister playing with that black cat yesterday, and some people are taking care of dogs and stuff…]

[I’m afraid humans don’t really place you in the same category as cats and dogs,] Zorian told her. [In fact, a sizeable number of humans think spiders are pretty… horrifying.]

[Even giant spiders?] Novelty asked, visibly incredulous.

[ Especially giant spiders,] Zorian said, laughing.

[How mean!] Novelty whined, her entire body vibrating in a clear show of annoyance.

Idly, Zorian wondered if painting Novelty pink and wrapping her in ribbons and glitter would make her cute enough for people to coo over. He could probably talk Novelty into going along with it…

Well. Something to think about if they managed to survive the month.

Fortunately, Novelty got over the incident very quickly and continued her exploration of Zorian’s workshop instead of brooding over the whole event.

Zorian let her to her exploration. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and when he opened his eyes again the metal plate in front of his was densely covered in spell formula markings.

They weren’t real, of course. The whole thing was just a mental illusion – a visualization of what the end result would look like based on his plans. Spotting a few possible flaws and failure points, he quickly went through a lengthy series of complicated calculation inside his head, almost instantly calculating problems that would have taken another spell formula crafter an entire afternoon of diligent calculation using pen and paper. The visualization of the end result blurred for a moment and then shifted into a different configuration that took these new calculations into account.

The process repeated itself several times, gradually refining the design. Most other artificers would have to spend a lot of time and mana making test plates and waste hours upon hours every time something had to be recalculated or adjusted, but Zorian’s mental enhancements allowed him to sidestep most of that process.

Of course, all this work wouldn’t even have to be done if it weren’t for the fact he had lost most of his spell formula blueprints while crossing over into the real world. So much work lost…

Thankfully, spell formula were one of the fields he was most confident in.

He suddenly realized Novelty was poking a small metal sphere he left on a nearby chair. He pointed his hand towards her, causing invisible waves of telekinetic force to seize her entire body and then gently but firmly dragged her away from the offending object.

"Don’t touch that," he told her verbally. "It’s dangerous."

She gave him an undecipherable look, staring at him quietly for a few seconds.

"What?" he asked her.

[You’re pretty scary,] she told him. [I didn’t even see you cast anything. You just casually pointed at me and I suddenly couldn’t move! And then you just dragged me off like it’s nothing… I thought mages like you needed to mumble and wave when they do their weird human magic?]

"They do. I’m just very, very good at this," he told her. Though this did remind him that he needed to curb these kind of moments as much as possible, since this kind of casual use of unstructured magic was not something a teenage mage like him should possess. Holding back for years and years was going to be hard…

[How did you even know what I was doing?] she continued. [Your back was turned! I’m sure of it!]

"This whole room is crisscrossed with a mesh of hair-thin mana threads centered on me," Zorian told her. "Whenever you pass through them, I can sense it."

[Like an invisible web?] she asked.

"Yes, exactly," he agreed. It was a detection trick he had learned at some point in the time loop, inspired by Taiven’s old trick of flooding her surroundings with her mana to detect hidden attacks and enemies. He didn’t have the mana reserves to copy her trick exactly, but he didn’t really have to. Shaping the mana into a mass of threads was much cheaper than simply flooding every nook and cranny with his mana, yet just as effective for his purposes. The only downside was that this kind of detection web required insanely good shaping skills to execute, but that was not really something Zorian had trouble with.

[Scary…] she repeated unhappily.

She glanced at the metal sphere she had been poking before he stopped her before giving him a speculative look.

[So what’s that thing anyway?] she said, pointing at the small sphere with one of her legs. [You didn’t complain when I was touch– err, I mean looking at the other things in the room, but you immediately reacted now? What is it?]

"It’s a hollow metal sphere holding a pocket dimension inside," he told her. "It’s supposed to suck in and contain a creature inside. Like a portable prison for powerful monsters."

[I… don’t understand,] she complained. [That’s meant to capture people? But it’s so small! I’d never fit in inside!]

Oh, right… not everyone was familiar with the concept of expanded spaces and pocket dimensions and whatnot.