“The Antecessors left a legacy that was both a blessing and a curse; the dungeons. Dungeons might seem like morbid constructions of labyrinths created by a bunch of paranoid beings to safeguard their treasures but believe me, you haven’t seen the worst. That is what the Seekers, Keepers and the Blackguard are for; to keep the worst from ever seeing the light of day. Even though it has not been without cost, oftentimes getting our race misunderstood and alienated because of what we keep from the others, we will gladly carry out our oaths if it means that the atrocities committed by that forgotten race will never be repeated…”-The First Keeper’s Journal, Triad Archives.

Meeting with the Lalilab's was felicitous when Arthur had found himself mired in the bog that was his thoughts. He hadn’t been moving forwards— neither was backtracking even an option worth considering.

And his skill, the one skill that was so cryptically worded revealed itself to him; he had just scratched the surface of what it could do.

He’d feared that some socially adept [Lords] and [Ladies] with skills would have outright steamrolled him were they to find that he didn’t have social skills. But now, he was the one laughing.

Even in combat, the skill was versatile; they’d tested it by having Nora attack him from different directions at once with the aim of causing chaos to his ability to counter.

To a certain degree, he could also say that the skill lent itself to being aware of what was going on in the bedlam that was many things occurring in a battle. He got less scratches as a result and Nora didn’t do things by halves.

After discovering how to extract Pyr mana from monster cores, he was just relieved. Now all he had to do was draw up the blueprints for a full sized ship.

For starters he’d give it the only engine he had, incorporate some dwarven shipbuilding techniques and cross his fingers that the thing would get off the ground.

Arthur was wiser, more experienced perhaps. Drawing runes had come a long way, now the lines were cleaner, the curves were done well and he’d even managed to miniaturize some of the runes to fit small spaces thanks to Volemhir’s pointers.

It was like graduating from fumbling with a crayon in grade school to writing cursive calligraphy on love letters in high school. There was still room for improvement however, it would not do to get overconfident so soon.

As for adventuring, well…he was still on break, but Nora occasionally went on solo adventuring; the woman could take care of herself. Compared to him, Nora was virtually indestructible even with her small frame.

Another thing that happened was, Arthur’s association with Edel the [Alchemist] had grown to the level of periodic correspondence on matters of research. They were like a pair of academics’ peer-reviewing each other’s work.

The two consulted on how to best make an apparatus that could accurately measure the amount of potency of mana for instance of which Arthur had the idea but he lacked for the materials.

He, of course, needed the accuracy to make a limiter for his mana engine so that he could keep an eye on the fluctuations of mana during testing.

“How’s that thing with Elena coming along?” Arthur said bent over the blueprints of a yatch sized aership. It was barely half the size of the dwarven-made aerships but it made up for its diminutive size with power and agility.

“She’ll come around soon. I’m just giving her some time to get herself together.” She replied, unfastening her boots. She’d come from a solo adventuring run as Snow. “People are asking where the other half of our party is by the way.”

“Ah, I’ll be out soon enough. As soon as I get the inventory of the assembly materials just right.”

“Where are you going to build it though?” Nora scooted over to peer over the parchment which covered most of the desktop in the study. It was all lines, circles and triangles—maths; specifically, trigonometry. It made her head hurt.

“I’m sure if you build it down there—,” she pointed with her thumb to where the basement workshop would be, “It’s not getting out unless you bring the mansion down on top of us.”

“Mmh, maybe there’s a secret passageway somewhere down there. The lift descends into an aquifer of running water. Remember the underground tunnel on our first adventure?”

“Yes? Ah,” her eyes lit up in realization. “ You think there’s a network of tunnels beneath Aldmoor don’t you?” She said. The dhampir folded her hands under her bosom and sat on the armrest of Arthur’s seat. “ It does make sense despite your conjectures, though some of them are just part of Aldmoor’s old dungeon. I heard it was cleared out long ago.”

“There has to be some way down there…” Arthur stated.

“Do you think It can fit the ship? Surely you’re not thinking of digging into the ground? You do not even have earth magic.”

“I have another option. I’m building this ship in parts that I can switch out with upgrades on the go,” his eyes twinkled as he pointed to the various parts of the aership. “ I’ll build it in the basement and when it’s ready, I’ll use [Inventory] to bring up the parts for final assemblage,” he paused, scrunching his nose thinking back on how filling [Inventory] to the brim felt like.

“On second thought…perhaps not. I think we should look for another way out. That lab has to have one…I mean it's sitting right inside an underground reservoir.”

Arthur's aership had the appearance of superyacht with a trimaran design. Bigger than a standard yacht and smaller than a corvette class warship. Comparably, It could have been closer in size to the Ikaros that Nevine had described to him when they were at the port of Riftedge.

The aership had the aerodynamic main body attached to two outrigger hulls on either side by a pair of short wings. The main engine mounts would be in the lowest section, the engine and cargo deck. Then in order of elevation from the bottom, it would be the engine deck, main deck,flight deck and sun deck.

The craft had a detachable sail rigging he could furl and unfurl whenever he wanted to maintain a long cruise but it would just be there for backup mana.

As long as the mana engine got going, it would collect enough to keep the thing aloft. Overall, the yacht looked ready to take off to the stars.

“How are you going to build a craft this large by yourself? It might take months…years even.”

“Uh, I’m working on it. There’s nobody we can trust yet; I can’t bring the guild master into this can I?”

‘Uh, there's that last favour from Volemhir’ he thought.

“Does she have a name?”

“Who?”

“Your ship of course, does she have one?”

“Whoops…” he scratched at his nape. “I am so bad at naming these things you know?”

“How about you name it after yourself?”

“Nah,” Arthur flicked his wrist, like he was shooing a fly. “Too corny; who names a ship after themselves? It’s not like I’ve got something to prove.”

“Well, the Phylandirs named some of their aerships after themselves,” Nora shrugged indifferently. “Maybe you could alter the name or something…name it after something from your home…”

“Mmh, Ad Astra; nowpe,” Arthur shook his head like a wet dog. Racking his hair in thought, “…let’s see…the Wakerider…Stormbreaker!”

“The Stormbreaker?”

Arthur’s pearly wide teeth showed through his broad grin, “Yes, The Stormbreaker.”

Time flew and the season was in full bloom. Considering it was the peak of spring, the rains were well and truly beat down on Aldmoor. Adventurers, like everyone else cooped themselves up like chicken; dreary weather made for dreary outdoor activities.

For Arthur, it was just another day…he was a creature who thrived in the cozy indoors but he was still a pluviophile, if the rain didn’t come with hailstones that is.

However, there was good news on other fronts too, he’d finally gotten what he’d been craving for so long; coffee and sugar courtesy of his friendly neighborhood alchemist.

It had just so happened that coffee was also an alchemical ingredient for Potions of Rejuvenation or stamina potions. They did have a coffee aftertaste.

Arthur had been complaining about how he wanted to keep himself chipper for when he was doing his research in one of his letters and Edel had sent him the things. Then realizing what they tasted like, he’d asked for ingredients and one of them, he realized was named cavae, how apt to refer to it as nightowl’s brew.

The youth really laughed hard that day. He discovered that the people of the town were going around brewing it all wrong and that’s why it tasted like mud most of the time. With help from alchemy skills, he fine-tuned the process of brewing. By trial and by error he relentlessly experimented until he made it palatable.

Arthur wasn’t a Starbucks barista by any means; it would still be a while before he roasted the beans right or before he got the ‘right’ grade of the cavae beans as it were. For sugar, that was a no brainer; even though sugar cane was nowhere to be found on the continent—yet.

Arthur still held hope that, given the many similarities Eryth shared with Earth, it was only a matter of time. Again with alchemy, they made granulated sugar from sugar beets and the town had sugar rush for days.

It turned out alchemists had a bad case of monomania; it took Arthur telling Edel how to slice and dice sugar beets, press the thing, purify and heat it to get the syrup which made white sugar. The man had been working with crystals for Thea’s sake; even the wife was simply dumbfounded.

Arthur met with the woman [Merchant Lady] Odessa Lalilab, briefly. She was like an older version of Hanna, though less sunny and more stern. She was still amiable because she was the face and the brains of Lalilab's merchant enterprise. He also had cursory encounters with Hanna’s older sibling brother and sister, Brien and Blu.

Arthur was content to settle for royalties from the sale of coffee and sugar when the woman brought it up. She would have fleeced him out of every coin he was worth but because he and her husband were such bosom buddies, she was gentler—merchant ladies were scary.

With another income to his name the aership coffers swelled. It did help him cut down on adventuring but he still needed the monster cores for his many experiments.

Also, he was able to acquire materials in quantities that would have sent tongues wagging were it to be done by an individual by using the Lalilab’s as a proxy. Hanna was the liaison in that regard but they kept things discreet.

Outwardly, it was just a friendly consorting of two houses so it didn’t trip any alarms. However, it was only a matter of time before the other merchant houses started asking questions about where new products were coming from.

First the safe source of Pyr mana, sold in null-steel canisters like cooking and welding gas; apparently, valves were common dwarven technology.

Then there was the sugar which kicked up a furor in the town, bakeries and restaurants were literally clamoring for the product as were the towners. The coffee also pulled a significant crowd.

It was just a matter of time because some of the houses were part of the supply chain, for instance, the infamous Phylandir house who owned a fleet of merchant ships and warehouses.

The other, more primary to the supply chain were the Flasksunder’s who dealt with agricultural goods, wines and alcohols both as middlemen and as farm owners.

The others, the Silvyre’s were mine owners and dealt with ore and crystals; they were rumoured to have an association with Yondouk the [aersmith] dwarf.

Finally, the Shadowmantles were real estate owners, mercenaries and owned overland trade caravans; they were the jacks of all trades among their peers.

“I really need that [Secretary] like yesterday; even with [Eidetic Memory] and [Eye of the Storm], I am bound to miss movements and details.”

“I’ll be going to her soon, see how ready she is to start moving in. The sooner we get her out of her shell the better.”

“Ah, right. I’ll be down at the lab, tell me if anything changes.”

The underground workshop or simply; the lab. Had it already been weeks since they’d seen the lab? It was indistinguishable from its former self.

The forge for instance, held worked lumber, ironwood, cut, measured and assembled to form the beginnings of the Stormbreaker's skeleton; or was it considered an airframe considering it was a flying craft?

It was just the bare bones of the thing; Nora had been right; it would take months just to make the thing unless he had an extra pair of hands. Nay, several pairs of hands.

There were beaten sheets of dwarf steel; he would’ve gotten a lighter metal but this one he’d acquired as per a cost-benefit analysis. He’d strip it once he got more money to replace it with the lightweight Fae-steel- Eryth’s version of aluminium. Because the fae hated iron and all those myths.

In another corner of the lab were the new brainchild of Arthur’s and Edel’s efforts, Pyr cannisters containing the hard to acquire mana.

Though certificates were still required for their possession; which the alchemist held on his behalf if the Guard were to ask. Missing was the material for the mana sail; a low priority to be saved for last at this point.

There was also the experiment with the alchemist’s silver. He was trying to make a thermometer equivalent that would measure mana by sealing it inside a calibrated test-tube with glue sealing off the top.

It was still a work in progress, still missing something. Then there was the dungeon shard he’d had which still didn’t give up any more of its secrets no matter how many nights he spent poking and prodding at its mechanisms.

The thing was nigh indestructible, he couldn’t look into its innards; even if he could…he had no way of putting it back together. so it just sat there, in its tripod, waiting for the next time Arthur thought of a way to wrest away the secrets hidden within.

And at the bottom of his metaphorical to do list, was the faulty telecry Volemhir had left him. Despite its lack of obfuscation wards, he was still no closer to understanding how it worked.

Telepsychic crystals were an altogether different field of study. And the gizmo itself? The rune craft he'd dissected so far wasn't even a peep in the entirety of what constituted the artifact.

Arthur had been right about one thing, Volemhir had done that, finding a small loop around his Geas. Claiming his last boon had been contingent on him fixing the telecry. The elf sure had the last laugh.

Arthur sighed, things changed so fast. He sat down to look at another project of his that he’d been looking into during his spare time—as if he had any. This side project was looking through the research of the man who lived in the Sturmdrache estate before they acquired the mansion.

He was looking through the journal of a sage-enchanter person who owned the lab. It made him feel queasy intruding on what was someone’s private notes; but the thing was simply too interesting to let it be.

Whether the man was alive or not, Arthur had no idea; and Ascal Conierva was his name. His ink-smudged, dog-eared journal where the sentences trailed off in some parts because of water damage read thus,

“…Just like Aqer (water) and Pyr (fire), Aer (air) is diametrically opposed to Ter (earth). While air is light and tends to be unstable and amorphous, earth is heavy, solid and anchored. I would wager that this should be common sense because even Lux (light) and Nox (darkness) are opposing affinities—”

“Oooh, how’d I not think of that?” he said out loud.

“...after observing strong Ter affinity users, I discovered that at some point their magic manifested so strongly that anything made of earth, the size of a pebble would be pulled towards them—

…this led me to believe, since the ground we walk on is made up of Ter, could it be, that was the reason we do not float? And are forever rooted to the ground like the land dwellers we are. Could it be, that is why things fall down like an apple would from a tree?

‘Eryth’s Newton huh?’ Mused Arthur, reclining against the old plane seat he’d arrived in this world in. That was just the prologue, a research question really. He thumbed another page

“...another observation leads me to believe that Verenite crystals; also known as truestone, come about from a very strong condensation of Ter mana that has been given direction. Verenite Ore is found in areas where suspected leylines flow in the northerly direction; thus the grey crystal always has a tendency to orient towards the north. Essentially, it (verenite) is a form of tertherite.

But it possesses another uncanny property—repulsion. My experiments have deduced that the flow of mana or some other power, when parallel between two pieces of the crystal, bring about attraction. When the flow is reversed in one crystal, repulsion occurs.

“A magnet! So that is why I got the skill [Veres North], “Arthur said to no one in particular. “ Verenite is lodestone!”

He leafed past the pages, wanting to get what the author was aiming for and arrived at a page full of illustrations. He skipped a couple of long winded explanations that looked like quantum mechanics before he arrived a page he could read without rubbing his eyes in incomprehension.

It featured a cross section of a sphere, depicting its inner structures; a convolution of rune craft so complex that Arthur had to rub his eyes, and rub his eyes again to make sure he was seeing right.

The rune work was so tiny even relative to the drawing itself. The outside was inscribed with runes in concentric and single circles with lines intersecting and joining each of them.

The best way to describe the object would have been to compare it to a miniature model of a certain city planet form a film with light sabers . Arthur had stumbled upon a bizarre thing; so he read on the annotated script beside the diagrams,

“…I will attempt to create a type of condensed tertherite. I dub it the Shelcon Quasogravis Upending Etherite-Shift Tellusphere Driver after my daughter, Shellie Conierva (may she rest in Thea’s bosom).

I have named it so because theoretically it should be able to affect everything around it by making it either heavier or lighter than air. In essence it affects the heaviness of materials hence Quasogravis. Upending because it subverts the laws of magic conservation…”

“Huh? What now? I seemed to have skipped a few magic theories somewhere along the way” Arthur remarked in stupefaction as he scratched at the nape of his neck.

The youth cringed at the verbosity of the name attached to the construct and decided that even with his no better naming sense he wouldn’t have come up with such an appellation that could make one’s tongue trip. He continued reading.

“…Etherite-Shift means it is able to convert any type of aspected mana into unaspected mana and vice versa though explaining the principles will have me delve into the most basic of magical theories which is superfluous at this point.”

“Speak for yourself man!” Arthur blurted in frustration. He was tempted to put the document down and just…leave it there. His brain was hurting from the amount of info dump he just gleaned off the writing and trying to parse it with his meagre knowledge of magical theory.

“As for the last part, Tellusphere means derived of Ter because it is Tertherite that has been condensed past what is theoretically possible but to delve into the intricacies of such a process please refer to—” his eye twitched.

“Aah, you had me in the first half with basic electro—, no aetheromagnetic repulsion and attraction…is that even a word?”

He flipped the next page, eyes darting all the way past several paragraphs describing where to find the references for the aforementioned information before he arrived somewhere where things began to make sense again.

“…I call it an driver to mock the dwarves with their many technological—”

‘Nowpe, not it.’ He skipped past a few paragraphs again.

“…it should simulate the phenomena that makes us heavier than the air; the last part of the name is common sense. It will revolutionize our way of life; we shall never be once again, landbound like the worms that crawl on the dirt…”

“Damn, that’s dark…dark and sweet at the same time. What happened here?” He looked around the workshop both grateful and sorry for the man who made it.

“…Testing trial #74, I have managed to harness and create a working tellusphere, however, only the force of attraction works.

Attempting to reverse the flow of mana has been unsuccessful. Tests for properties of verenite using both iron dust (verenic metal) and mithril dust (non-verenic metal) confirm that it exhibits the same properties as the force that attracts objects to the ground (addendum; verenite crystals only attract iron).

Another thing of note is that at a distance of around thirty paces around the construct, objects are noticeably heavier as postulated in my earlier theory.”

Supplementary Notes: “To whoever finds my research—

“Vesper’s Pits, this reads like a crime novel waiting to happen…” Arthur muttered as he stymied his anxiety, drawing from [Eye of the Storm] to keep him grounded.

“—my research is incomplete. Sometimes, even the best of us cannot run away from their past or time. In my single-minded pursuit of the arcane I have made many enemies and it’s only a matter of when, not if they come for me.

Some of them are well known, yet well-hidden right under our noses. I have been alienated by my fellow mages; scorned by the Academy that I have worked for, for so many years and there is no one I can turn to. So I ask you; no I beseech you…if you do get this book and believe you have the aptitude to do what must be done—”

“Here comes the hammer,” Arthur sucked in a breath.

“—in my archiving vault, on the last row at the back of the room, in the third book from the left is a magestone slate concealed between the pages. Infuse it with mana, the rune sequence is S.ᚺ. ᛖ. ᛚ. ᛚ. ᛁ. ᛖ. .

Press the sequence and let the slate do the rest. I have also left some of my research notes detailing where to find some of my safe houses where Thea willing I hope to continue my research, If I ever manage to make it out of here alive. As I cannot carry many of the things I hold so dear to me including the culmination of my labors, I leave it with you in the hopes that you might be a prudent soul. May Thea bless you…”

“Vesper’s Pits and Dead End Hydras!” Arthur cursed.