The Wanderer's Rebirth: Other Paths

Hmmm, I think they’re becoming desensitized to seeing new stuff when they get up, Joram thought as he watched everyone head over to the mess hall, using the new covered path that he’d built last night. It was now attached to the side of the house, allowing for access to the mess hall without having to first go out the front door.

He had been surprised when Celys had returned earlier, once more accompanied by helpers. Taking a better look, he realized that there were more than there had been yesterday. Shrugging, he went back to work building the new residence for the girls.

It took until mid-day for him to decide that he was done for the day, at least on that project anyways. His next project, to keep his mind fresh and interested, was to work on the road leading to Kirkwall. It was decent, but he thought that adding some lights might help with security. Or, at least, making people feel a bit safer.

So, once everyone was back inside the mess hall for lunch, he left Geeves with instructions to let him know if anything happened while he was working. That done, he prepared for the project.

In just one manifestation, he managed to create enough insulated wire, along with enough lamp posts to line the way to Kirkwall. It took another few hours to first get the wiring all set up and embedded into the roadside. Then came the stone posts that the lamp posts would be attached to, which he decided to make using the same stone as the road to keep with the theme.

The lamp posts themselves took the shape of those olde-style Victorian streetlamps, though they wouldn’t contain oil, or even natural gas fittings. Instead, he just made them with LED bulbs. He also made the underside of the top of the lamp mirrored so that more light would be sent down to the ground.

He was glad for his [Creationist] Achievement along with his [Master of Ectoplasm] Title, as they provided an extra ten hardness to anything he created, making the streetlamps that much more durable. It saved him from having to use [Matter Manipulation] to make things more durable. Though, depending on if the lamp posts were damaged, he might still have to use [Matter Manipulation] in the future.

In fact, the increase to hardness applied to anything he created, if he wanted it to. Which meant that pretty much everything that he’d created using [Ectoplasmic Creation] or [True Creation] had been hardened. Including the everything he’d been using to build the new structures and such.

By the time he finished with the streetlamps, the guards on the walls of Kirkwall were giving him odd looks. Odd looks, but not stopping him, which he felt was probably on the weirder side of things. Especially when he was obviously doing something they’d never before witnessed.

Shrugging, he waved then started jogging back home, glad that his Constitution was now ridiculously high, and that he had [Running]. If the him from Earth had been the one jogging, he’d have had to stop after only a hundred metres or so, as his cardio had always been atrocious. Now? He felt as though he could just keep running and be fine.

Weird.

Well, given his stats, it probably wasn’t all that weird-

‘So, why bother with the greenhouse if you’d been planning on giving those girls Rings of Sustenance?’ Avi asked from his side, jogging along just like him.

He nearly tripped and faceplanted when he noticed her very modern jogging attire but managed to catch himself with a quick use of [Telekinesis].

‘Well, why not? They can still eat if they want to. They can also sleep longer than two hours if they want to, which they’ll probably do. Mostly, though, I wanted to make sure they’ll be OK if I’m away for a stretch,’ he sent, focussing on the path ahead.

‘Planning on travelling?’ Avi inquired curiously, switching from running to floating on her side so that she could look at him more directly.

‘Well, yeah,’ he sent, a bit confused at her surprise. ‘I’m in a whole new world. There’s so much to explore and see that it would be a waste to just stay in the forest for the rest of my life.’

‘That’s a bit of a surprise coming from you, of all people,’ she said, giving him an appraising look.

‘… that’s fair,’ he sent back, not able to argue the fact that he was more of a homebody than anything.

‘So, will you take any of those girls with you?’ she asked, looking a bit more interested that he thought she’d be.

‘I don’t know,’ he sent back, honestly not knowing, or having planned, what he’d do that far ahead.

‘Well, just be firm when the time comes,’ Avi said with a wink before vanishing once more, leaving him stupefied.

What’s that supposed to mean? He wondered as he arrived at his front gates.

Shaking his head, he got back to work. The breaker box for the lamps still needed to be made, let alone the enchantment needed to provide the electricity for the streetlamps. And somewhere to hide or disguise it….

- - -

“So, everything went well today?” he asked Myra as she flopped onto the bed as though someone had cut her strings.

“Ugh,” she said, then proceeded to tell the tale of almost fifty girls going to town.

He had to suppress his laughter, then his anger, as she told him about how some of them had exclaimed at how “huge” Kirkwall was, and when a couple of villagers had pestered Collette and Charlotte overly much. It wasn’t that they’d approached the twins, no, but when they’d made lewd comments about “milking” them. It wasn’t until Asami had come along and practically roasted their tails off that they’d run off.

Aside from those few idiots, the villagers had been more than helpful and kind to the girls. Even the trip to the bank for their IDs had gone well, though not without incident.

“So, when the first girl was asked what her name was, she told the clerk and that was fine, though she had an odd name,” Myra said, shaking her head at the memory. “But then the next girl, a human, had gone up and told the clerk her name and, well, that’s when it got weird,” she explained.

In short, his little whim of adding “Smith” to their names had had unexpected consequences. Now, well. Now there were forty-six girls registered with the family name of Smith.

“And it wasn’t even that that had made it so… weird,” Myra said, giving him the side-eye. “It was that almost every one of them was blushing and nervous about sharing their ‘family’ name,” she finished, now outright glaring at him.

“Ah, well, that might be my fault then,” he said, knowing that it was certainly his fault. “None of them had given a family name, so I thought maybe adding the one I wanted for myself would help make them feel more welcome,” he said, remembering that he’d forgotten to head to the bank himself to have that change made on his own ID and records.

“Uh-huh,” Myra grunted, looking somewhat put out about it all. It was only when she started fidgeting with her ring that he started to get an inkling.

“Yup,” Asami said, snorting as she, too, started playing with her ring.

Aww, shit, he eloquently mused as he realized just how deep a hole he’d dug for himself.

‘Oh, my dear. You have absolutely no idea how deep that rabbit hole goes,’ Avi said, chortling at him.

Asami looked over to where Avi was standing and nodded again, tails swishing to and fro, a smile on her lips and a glint in her eyes.

“So,” he said, then coughed. “Since everyone now has an identification card, does that mean that you’ve already set up accounts for everyone?”

“Mmm,” Myra hummed as she rolled over onto her back. “It’s not much, but I was able to give each of them twenty bonze coins for their accounts. Which reminds me, you now owe me,” she said, rolling her head to the side so that she could look at him.

“That’s fine, I’ll head over to the bank tomorrow and make some deposits,” Joram said with a smile, hoping that that would be enough.

When she didn’t say anything else, he heaved a silent sigh of relief as he ignored the pointed looks from Avi.

There was a bit more small talk before bed, but it finished quickly due to how tired Myra was. He was glad, as he really wanted to start studying [Schism]. He was realizing that the amount of work that he’d taken on would go much faster if he had that Power running, especially since it basically gave a second brain that could help with using his Skills and Powers. Well, maybe calling it a second “mind” would be more accurate…?

He mentally shrugged, then got to reviewing the [Schism] Power.

- - -

*Start of Day 3 after purchasing the slaves*

By the time he got up for the day, he was wondering if [Schism] always had the augmentation option to get more than one extra Mind up and running. Feeling a bit… uncertain, Joram went through his usual morning routine- which for some reason now included tucking in the three demons- and made his way to his library.

After looking through his source books, he was now sure that the additional minds augmentation wasn’t an original option. Which meant that it was yet another option added in afterwards.

With how… easy it was to learn, so much so that he was now confident that he could start using [Schism] right away, he wondered if it had been added by his “Prime” self. Altaea had, after all, mentioned that she’d trained him. Had it been something that he’d come up with during that time?

Shaking his head, he shoved all of those useless thoughts aside. There was no way for him to find out, so it was truly useless to worry about it. So, filing all that away, he quickly manifested [Schism], augmenting it so that he could have three additional Minds running in the background. With his current rate of regeneration that his power pool enjoyed, the draw should still be well within what he could handle. In fact, he was sure that he could have many more running, but wasn’t sure how it would feel.

Joram: So, here we are…

Minds 2-4: Yep~

Joram: So, ah, can I get you guys working on learning everything that Altaea left for me?

Mind 2: Easy enough. But didn’t you want some help with building stuff?

Then something else occurred to him that really set his draconic need for loot to practically blazing up into a veritable inferno.

Joram: Right. Well, then could Mind 2 help with building, then maybe Mind 3 work on learning, while Mind 4 works on making Dust Crystals. Then, when I’ve finished the buildings I need for now, we’ll start working on a Dungeon for the place.

Minds 2-4: Easy-peasy~!

Nodding, Joram left his office and went back outside to get to work on the apartment building. He still needed to figure out a way to make an elevator for the place. Well, maybe he’d add one to the house too, just in case.

Then another thought occurred to him, so he pulled up his ridiculous [Summon: All] Class Ability and had another look at it.

[Summon: All]

You gain the Class Ability to use [Summon: All].

This ability is a [Creation] ability.

- Cost: Variable

- Mundane and common objects will cost 1-10 MP. Add this again for every size category above Medium.

- High quality, but still mundane, objects will cost 10-20 MP. Add this again for every size category above Medium.

- Enchanted objects require Cores to summon. Core Grade is commensurate to the value of the enchanted item. MP cost is 10 per Core Grade.

- Creatures:

- 1MP per Level of Creature.

- Add 4MP per Level of Creature for intelligent creatures.

- Add 5MP per Level of Creature for any creature with innate spellcasting abilities, spell-like abilities, or supernatural abilities.

- Duration: Variable.

- Depending on what is summoned, the duration is anything from minutes to days. Inanimate objects have the longest duration while living beings have the shortest duration.

Dust Crystals can be used to either extend the duration or to make the summon permanent. Cost is calculated in Units of Dust, or UD.

- UD Cost = Class Level × INT Mod / [Master Summoner] Ranks for a living being.

- UD Cost = Class Level × 0.1 × INT Mod / [Master Summoner] Ranks for inanimate objects.

- UD Cost = Class Level × 0.75 × INT Mod / [Master Summoner] Ranks for enchanted objects.

“Just crazy,” he muttered outside of the half-built apartment building.

Looking a bit further into it, each Unit of Dust seemed to be equivalent of 1/100th of an SSS Rank Crystal Core. So, if he was going to put an arbitrary label on it, he’d call it a Dust Point, or DP. Which, really was just another name for a Unit of Dust. So, maybe he’d just leave it as UD…. But Dust Points sounded a bit cooler?

Who was he kidding. He was terrible at naming stuff.

He looked at the information again, and just about fell over when he noticed that “Unit of Dust” was now replaced with “Dust Point”.

“What the hell…?” he muttered in both shock and wonder. Was the System that customizable?

Thinking back, the System had indeed been… amenable to his suggestions in the past, especially considering his Title, [System’s Benefactor].

System’s Benefactor

You have assisted the Universal Assistance and Survival System in becoming more efficient.

- Benefit:

- The [Analyze] Skill now allows you to get information on from a target as though the Skill were 1 (one) Tier higher.

- Additional details of any identified target will be given.

Shaking his head because everything was just so alien to him, he got back to work. This time, though, he used [Summon: All] to bring forth the materials that he wanted to use, then felt the difference when they appeared.

He always had an innate understanding of how long something would stay once summoned. The various items he made with [Ectoplasmic Creation] had their own durations inherent in their making. Though with [Stability of Creation] things remained much longer than before.

[Stability of Creation] – 155% longer.

Any “Creation” or “Manipulation” type ability, power, or spell that has a duration has that duration extended by (INT x 2.5%).

- Additionally, if the duration is measured in seconds, it will then be measured in minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days, days to instantaneous.

But what he felt from his latest block of steel was that it was already permanent. Or, in gamer terms, an instantaneous effect. Was that because steel was considered mundane, and thus had a summon duration in “days”?

Shaking his head, he wondered if he was going to negatively affect the planet’s gravity if he just kept on making stuff like he was. Would the planet’s orbit eventually begin to decay?

No, that probably wouldn’t matter in the long run, as most planets continued to accumulate mass throughout their lifespans. He was pretty sure that Earth gained something like 40k tonnes of cosmic detritus each year… but didn’t it also lose over 95k tonnes of light gasses each year too…?

He sighed. Ultimately, he had to have confidence that the System wouldn’t screw over its planet by giving him something completely broken like [Summon: All] and [Stability of Creation].

Then another thought occurred to him, so he tried it out.

A use of [Summon: All] later, and he was looking at a brand-new refrigerator. And not one of those boring white ones you’d see in most apartments these days, but one of those more expensive ones with a freezer drawer on the bottom and the water/ice dispenser on the left side.

This time, he could feel that it wasn’t an “instantaneous” effect, and that it would vanish in just over a day and a half. Looking at it, he withdrew a 100 DP Dust Crystal and just kind of tapped it against the front of the fridge.

Then just about dropped the tiny fragment of crystal that remained of the larger crystal that didn’t vanish in a small flash of light. He absently slipped the little fragment into his pocket as he regarded the fridge, trying to feel if he still had a connection with it.

He did not.

Did that mean that it was now permanently there? If so, then he’d have to do that another sixty-three times to get one in each unit for the apartment building.

Frowning, he did a bit of mental math and surmised that it would be much less expensive to just use [True Creation] to make everything, as each fridge would cost about 97 DP to stabilize. Or would it?

So, he withdrew another full Dust Crystal then used [Summon: All] once more, but focussed on getting as many fridges as possible while concentrating on making them permanent. He watched seventeen identical fridges to the first one appear as he felt the Dust Crystal vanish from his hand. He looked down at his hand and saw that a small shard remained.

Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew the other shard and compared their sized.

“The same,” he muttered, then smiled.

Now, he wasn’t quite so sure which method would be more efficient, [True Creation] or [Summon: All]. Though, he hadn’t quite pushed [True Creation] as far as he could yet.

So, he did.

He pushed [True Creation] until he felt as though he would finally suffer ability burn and cut off there. But before that happened, he’d needed to shift what else he needed to produce, as he’d easily made the 46 remaining fridges that he needed. He’d then gone onto making furniture for each unit, then the light fixtures, then even made 50” LED TVs for each unit before he ran out of “room” while making the toilets.

“Holy shit,” he said, stunned at just how crazy just one manifestation of [True Creation] was, then remembered [Desire of Creation].

[Desire of Creation] – 800% increase.

Any “Creation” or “Manipulation” type ability, power, or spell that you use that has a volume or mass created or specified in its use, has that volume increased by 100%.

- Every level thereafter, the bonus increases by 50%.

“I’m completely broken,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. If he wasn’t as honest as he was, he was sure that he could just go out and buy himself a kingdom by exploiting that Class Ability.

Then again, the attention he would get by doing that would certainly be more than he would either like or could handle. Especially since he wasn’t sure where he landed when it came to this world’s power scale.

“At least finishing the apartment building today will be easier than I expected,” he muttered before getting to work finishing everything up. He still needed to run a few errands today, not the least of which was making sure that Myra and the others’ accounts had a bit more money in them.