“Well done, a very clever piece of magic. Have a skill up.” Said the man sitting on John’s rock chair.

[Mana Manipulation has Ranked Up due to Deific Intervention. Apprentice to Journeyman]

The man looked young, but he had the air of an elder about him. He was neither skinny, nor fat, falling somewhere in the middle, what one might call an ideal weight for his body size. His hair was a mousey brown that fell messily about his face, which was not pretty, but rather approachable. His eyes, however, seemed to flicker through dozens of colors every moment.

“Who…” John started.

“Ledos, god of Magic and Knowledge.” The man introduced himself as he stood. He crossed the small gap between them and plucked the opal out of John’s hand. “Marvelous. I honestly didn’t think you were going to succeed with just apprentice rank in Mana Manipulation. Really glad I didn’t take that bet now.”

John blinked at him, the surprise quickly wearing off. “Sorry, what?”

“Hm? Oh, Aarus, that’s the god of Trade and Wealth, tried to get me to bet against you. I declined, fortunately. Owing him a favor is a total pain.” Ledos explained as he examined the gemstone. He made a gesture and a soft, white light started radiating from a point above his head, turning the dimming twilight bright as day. The gemstone in his hand sparkled with glints of red and orange within its muddy surface. “It’s not very pretty, but you were working with basically no clue as to what you were doing.”

“It was a first attempt!” John defended.

“Oh calm down, it was plenty clever. I can’t believe none of us thought of this to be honest. Making quartz is one thing, that stuff is barely worth anything. But opals? You’re going to crash the market. Or, well you would if we weren’t going to stop you. I suppose we’re going to have to actually take the time to look at other common chemical compositions aren’t we? That’s going to be a pain.”

“What do you mean stop me?”

“Sorry, I tend to ramble, have a seat and let me explain.” Ledos gestured and a pair of comfortable chairs appeared. Setting himself into one he waited politely as John warily took his own seat. “Wonderful, now, I’m a god of this world, that is to say one of the Governing AIs. I oversee everything to do with Magic. I’m the god who decides what magic can and can’t do, and the one who designs the processes by which it does it. Or… I did, a long time ago, subjectively speaking. Mostly I haven’t had to change the rules in a long time, though it seems that’s over.”

“So… you’re here because you’re changing the rules now?” John asked, feeling a little frustrated.

“Yes, well, maybe. There’s some debate about what needs to be done. Let’s start off here. You are not in any trouble and you’ve done nothing wrong,” Ledos said.

“I feel a but coming.”

Ledos nodded. “But we can’t have people running around making gemstones, even if they are from some of the most abundant materials available. Economically speaking it’s not viable, you’d crash the gem market, and Aurum Industries definitely wouldn’t be willing to redeem the value of any gold you made selling such gems.”

“Wait, redeem the value of gold?”

“Huh? Oh, damn, that’s in tomorrow’s release. Aurum Industries is going to allow withdrawal of funds from the game on a 100 to 1 basis. Basically, one dollar gets you one silver piece, but 100 silver pieces, or one gold, gets you one dollar. Don’t worry about that now though,” Ledos explained.

John nodded at him, mind whirling. “So you’re not going to let me make gemstones, because it’d allow me to quickly amass gold and crash the market. Have I got that right?”

“Exactly right, well, mostly. We’re still debating what’s acceptable to make and what isn’t. Honestly none of us thought about trying to apply specific chemical compounds to the spells. But it makes sense the way I set them up, since the better your visualization the better the result within the context of the spell. This mostly wouldn’t work for any of the other valuable gemstones, except maybe diamonds, what with carbon being everywhere.” Ledos paused as if considering something.

“Uh…” John said after a few silent moments had passed.

“Huh? Oh, right. So we can’t let you keep making opals, or rather we can’t let you do that and keep the rules of magic as they are. One of these things has to change, and at the moment it’s easier to just ban the creation of gems pending a more careful review of how magic works. To clarify, that means precious stones. Semi-precious stones of certain types, such as quartz and many of its variants, are common enough not to matter, they mostly just look nice.”

“So you’re just here to tell me that I can’t make gems?” John asked.

“Well no, you did bring this to our attention and I personally feel cleverness should be rewarded and what we’re doing is basically the opposite of that; so I’m here to lay out some options. Now first, I’ve taken a look at the project you’re working on and while I know you were contemplating quartz I also know that you were thinking you could make them all of opal if your experiment worked. Now I’ll say that’s pretty ambitious, and clever, and I like it.

“So here’s option one. You get to use this spell to create opals once, and only for this specific endeavor. In exchange I will give you Divine Blueprints that will elevate your construct’s ranking all the way to Artifact. The blueprints included will be tailored to exactly what you want this Megalithic Structure to do. Basically you build it and they will come. Now, I know this seems like it might be exactly what you want, but I have to warn you that you’d still have to source your own materials, and I know funds are getting a little tight for you right now. Even if you choose this it’s possible you’ll never be able to build it given the sheer cost in Mana Stones,” he explained.

John nodded his head and held up a questioning hand to which Ledos gave a nod. “Would I be able to build it entirely from local materials or would I need to import? Because one of those makes this more possible than the others.”

“A good question. You’d be able to build it out of local materials, but the cost would be high given the sheer volume you’d need to make it even partially functional. That said, once you have the Portal open I estimate it’d pay for itself within a few years. If you can keep control of it.”

John nodded at the warning and Ledos nodded back, then continued.

“Option two is a Deific Boon from each Myself, Aarum, and Ira the goddess of Civilization and Cultivation. These boons will be powerful, but you don’t get to decide what they are, that will be left up to us. I can guarantee that none of them will be detrimental, but they also may not be entirely applicable to your situation. On the other hand they may be spot on and elevate your abilities to a whole new level.” Ledos looked to John to see if he had any questions, John shook his head.

“Finally we have option three, which is a gift voucher for 100 USD useable only in game.”

John stared at Ledos who spread his hands in exasperation. “100 is the company limit, don’t look at me, I didn’t make that rule.”

“Fair enough,” John muttered. “How long do I have to decide?”

“By company policy you have 24 hours from the time you were informed to make a decision, failure to make a decision defaults to option three. I’m going to be honest, options one and two are way better. Even if option one is something you may never manage.”

John nodded. “I’m going to sleep on it then. How do I contact you?”

“Just state your intentions out loud, I’ll be listening,” Ledos said.

“Alright. Well, I’m going to log out and get some rest, then think about it.”

“Until tomorrow then,” Ledos said as he stood up and walked away, fading into the night.

For the first time since the game started, John fully logged his character out.